And managing your time more efficiently isn’t the answer.

You may remember my article about outsourcing your life, which features an interview with Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling book The Four-Hour Workweek. The article revealed how you can hire a virtual assistant (VA) for as little as five dollars per hour and delegate many of the items on your to-do list to that VA in order to save you time and boost your productivity.

Delegating isn’t the only key to reducing your workload and your stress level, however. You also need to be discerning about what you take on: Not everything deserves to go on your to-do list.

Even more importantly, some things deserve to be on your list that aren’t there now. I’m talking about career goals, or life goals.

When was the last time you prioritized your “to-do” list based on what will help further your marketing career instead of merely what will get you through your week? Do you have things on that list that you’d like to have accomplished one year from now? Or in five years?

I sat down for a podcast interview with best-selling author David Allen, the guru of the productivity methodology known as “GTD” (which stands for Getting Things Done and is also the name of his New York Times Best-Seller). We discussed life and time management, and the psychology behind why so many of us struggle with accomplishing what we want in our careers and in our personal lives.

I have already written about GTD for MarketingProfsâ??an article titled “Clearing the Clutter: How Busy Marketers Can Get Things Done. In it, I wrote:

Once you stop using your brain as the holding tank for all the important things that you need to do today, tomorrow, next week, or even further into the future, the sooner you become clear and your mind will be open to wander, unfettered. Only then can your creativity truly be unleashed, and you reach a state of flow that David Allen refers to as “Mind like water.”

“Mind like water” is a pretty foreign concept to many marketers and professionals because of the way we’ve trained ourselves to think about our day. Daily to-do lists, constant phone and email interruptions, and other minutiae bog us down and distract us. The “mind like water” simile originated from the martial arts but can be applied to business because it describes a state of mind where the little things don’t get to you.

When you over- (or under-) react to the world around you, by not doing what you need to do in a timely fashion, your procrastination creates a state of chaos that affects your ability to succeed. So instead of your controlling yourself in your environment in order to get to where you want to be, your world controls you, limiting your chances for personal and professional success.

In the interview David suggested that when you avoid tasks you’re actually allowing yourself to be distracted because the task is something daunting that is outside your comfort zoneâ??even though that one thing could become the most successful thing you’ve ever done.

By over-thinking and embedding decisions in every task, you create barriers to your productivity, adding another layer of procrastinationâ??which, as I’m sure we all know, leads to stress.

One of the biggest barriers to “getting things done” is not understanding what time management really means.

David said in the interview, “You can’t manage time, you actually only manage what you do during time.” Translation? To get more done, we have to look at how we manage our focus, our actions, and our activities, because “time” doesn’t change. So “time management” is actually a misnomer.

Here are a few tips from David that I’d like to share with you to help better manage your focus and achieve your goals:

• Manage your tasks by taking the right action: Instead of prioritizing your to-do list, decide what tasks you will commit yourself through to completion. Then, figure out where and when you need to accomplish your goal, so you can better manage your tasks. For example, if you have a project management list, you might want to determine what pieces you want to be involved with, what you want to delegate, and what tools you’ll need to complete the project. From there, you can better fit the project into your schedule, because you know what you need to do and when you need to do it.
• Minimize your time stealers: Anything that distracts you turns into a time stealer, because it’s literally robbing you of precious time. Television is a big “time stealer” in our personal lives, but there are other things we do at work that affect us daily. Constantly checking your email or voicemail, or obsessing about smaller details on projects, can have an impact on our productivity. Many time stealers are essential to our work day, so the trick is to learn when these tasks are appropriate and determine whether or not you’re doing them too much or too often.
• Review your tasks weekly, not daily: One of the most common pitfalls in task management is to obsess about the unimportant details of your day. From up-to-the-minute schedules for lunch to clearing out your “in box,” daily to-do lists are difficult to maintain in the longer term because of the “people” factor. In a perfect world, robots would do everything on your list in the order you’ve prioritized them, but life doesn’t work that way. By looking at your to-do list on a higher levelâ??in a weekly appointment with yourselfâ??you can block out time to fit in your goals when it is appropriate during the week. And (here’s the best part) you’ll get more done.

Whether you work as a marketing intern or as vice-president, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has something for everyone. His concept is not just about managing your tasks; it’s about clearing out the clutter in your head to achieve “mind like water.”

With such a frame of mind you will not only “get things done” in your career but but also build a successful framework that will reach further than just “today.”

I invite you to listen to my interview with David Allen to learn more time- and sanity-saving tips that can help you in both your personal and your professional life.

Link Economics 101: A Prerequisite for Advanced SEO.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Greg Boser, President and CEO, 3 Dog Media
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Todd Friesen, President, Oilman SEO
Rae Hoffman, Owner, Sugarrae Internet Consulting
Stephan Spencer, President & CEO, Netconcepts
Brett Tabke, CEO, WebmasterWorld.com

Moderator: Alex Bennert, In House SEO, Wall Street Journal

Speakers:
Adam Audette, Founder, AudetteMedia, Inc.
Nathan Buggia, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft
Jordan Glogau, Enterprise Search and Business Development, 1800Flowers.com
Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google, Inc.
Stephan Spencer, President & CEO, Netconcepts

Whether you are Web 2.0 or Web 1.0, are a big brand or an unknown startup, have lots of content or just a little, youâ??ll need this SEO knowledge.

You will learn:

• Best practices for both â??on-page? and â??off-page? SEO
• Technical optimization â?? from URLs to HTML
• Making content â??sing? to the search engines
• Site architecture issues and implications
• Garnering links â?? creative strategies, pragmatic tactics (that work!)
• Competitor analysis â?? reverse engineering their link networks, keyword portfolios etc.
• Techniques for making Web 2.0 and rich media content search engine friendly
• Ways to circumvent the SEO roadblocks common in Content Management Systems and e-commerce platforms
• Optimizing blogs and RSS feeds â?? unique challenges and opportunities
• Gaining placement in vertical search â?? image search, local search, product search, news search and more
• Social media optimization â?? tactical ins-and-outs of Digg, StumbleUpon, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Flickr, Twitter, etc.
• A bevy of tools â?? many of them free

Moderator: Matt McGee, Assignment Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Thomas Schmitz, SEO Analyst & Social Media Consultant, Portent Interactive
Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
David Wallace, CEO/Founder, SearchRank

Time:
2:45pm-3:45pm (1 hr)

Moderator: Jessica Bowman, Founder, SEOinhouse.com

Speakers:

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Dave Lloyd, Search Marketing Manager, Cisco
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts

Time:
11:30am-12:30pm (1 hr)

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Ken Jurina, President, Epiar Inc.
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
Lauren Vaccarello, Founder, lv logic
David Wallace, CEO/Founder, SearchRank

Time:
10:00am-11:15am (1 hr 15 min)

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Alex Bennert, In House SEO, Wall Street Journal
Jordan Kasteler, Co-Founder, SearchandSocial.com
Carolyn Shelby, Mercenary, CShel
Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
Jonah Stein, Founder, ItsTheROI

Time:
4:30pm-5:45pm (1 hr 15 min)

Join us for a hands-on, two day workshop on search engine optimization and marketing that covers all the bases. With a live Internet connection, attendee websites will be deconstructed – with attendees playing an active role in diagnosing what ails each site from an SEO standpoint. Such sticky issues as making your database-driven website “search engine friendly” and workarounds for “spider traps” and poor search engine practices will be tackled. Googleâ??s secrets will be revealed, including details around PageRank, blended results (“universal search”), indented listings, sitelinks, and more. Case examples from B2C, B2B, nonprofit and higher education will be shared, including the “inside scoop” on what worked and what didn’t.

You will walk away with loads of practical, actionable tactics and tips, a number of which are not widely known in the SEO community. For example:
â?¢ Minimize duplicate content and keep your site from getting hit by Google’s duplicate content filter
â?¢ Identify, in unconventional ways, high PageRank-endowed, industry-specific, authoritative links that will
increase your position in the search results
â?¢ “Take away” a competitor’s second indented listing
â?¢ Reverse engineer your competitors’ backlinks to look for link opportunities for yourself

This workshop is designed with non-technical marketers in mind. But even the Internet-savvy techie will get a lot out of this tailored, intensive workshop. Through interactive presentations and exercises, case examples, and best-practice implementation reviews, participants will leave with a comprehensive understanding of how they can profit from search engines as a marketing channel. First five paid registrants for each venue who submit their URL (or a competitor’s URL if they prefer) will get an interactive, real-time critique of the site’s search engine findability during the workshop.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
â?¢ The changing landscape of SEO and how you can make the most of it as a marketer
â?¢ How to rocket past competitors in search rankings
â?¢ How to benchmark against your competitors
â?¢ What to measure for maximizing the return on your search marketing investment
â?¢ How to budget interactive marketing campaigns to include SEO
â?¢ How to effectively leverage content, online tools, social networks and social

AGENDA: DAY 1
â?¢ Anatomy of a Search Engine — Spiders, Indices & Algorithms, Market Share & Trends
â?¢ Inside the Head of the Searcher — Searcher Behavior & Intent
â?¢ Hands-on Keyword Research & Keyword Portfolio Management
â?¢ SEO Copywriting — Optimizing Your Content
â?¢ HTML Optimization — Make Your HTML “Sing”
â?¢ Search Friendly Site Architecture, Design, Navigation & Internal Hierarchical Linking Structures
â?¢ Technical Optimization — URLs, Redirects, Tracking Parameters, Flash, JavaScript/AJAX and more
â?¢ Link Building — Tools & Tactics for Acquiring Valuable, Relevant Links Sustainably
â?¢ Social Media Marketing â?? Leveraging Online Communities to Create Links & Buzz

AGENDA: DAY 2
â?¢ Paid Search Fundamentals & Achieving Synergies with SEO
â?¢ Search Analytics — Metrics that Drive ROI
â?¢ Tools of the Trade — The Essential Tools & Resources for your SEO & Paid Search Toolkit
â?¢ Vertical Search — Local Search, News Search, Product Search, Image Search, Video Search, Blog Search, Mobile Search
â?¢ Worst Practices — Beyond the “Best Practices” to the Dark Side of “Black Hat” Spam & Other Deadly Mistakes
â?¢ Site Clinic & Interactive Site Reviews — Apply Your Knowledge by Auditing Fellow Attendees’ Websites
â?¢ Taking It Back to the Job, Homework, Wrap-Up and Review