Working The Trough

May 19, 2010

A trough is what you go through when life just seems a grind and you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. A trough can be short or it can seem to last forever. I know people who consider their whole life to have been a trough, yes they can very easily bring you down.

A trough above all though is a state of mind.

Let’s get the facts. If you are in my line of work, estate agency, there are so many jobs that you need to do and it is only on the sale or rental of a place or when you sign a mortgage that you get paid. The other jobs are just as important because they put you in the place to be able to sign those final documents. However they can be seen as a trough because they do not bring any material reward.

In the online marketing world the trough is the backlinking, the directory submissions, the blog commenting, the endless minutiae that seems to lead nowhere and the writing of blog posts that just don’t work until you uncover the golden nugget or the post that works.

The fact is you need to work the troughs and find a way of making them enjoyable. If you don’t then you will never succeed on or offline and like some of those people I know, your life may end up as a seemingly endless trough of despair.

If you have a final goal to aim for and a series of stepping stones to get there then the trough is much more bearable because you know that everything you do is a step on the road towards the ultimate success that you want. You are also aware that your goals are ambitious and you cannot just get there in a single step. Many tiny bites of this particular whale may well be needed before you make an appreciable impression. And if your goal is the mother of all blue whales then get ready to get into that trough and enjoy it for all you are worth because getting to the top may well take a very long time.

As long as you can spot the progress by having measureable goals along the way then you should not really worry about the troughs. However taking your eye off the prize can be the end of your project so don’t do it. The trough is there to test you and test you it will. Don’t succumb to temptation.

Don’t forget if you need to lose some of those boring jobs by outsourcing them then oDesk is a great place to go and get those workers.