The Secret Life of Indexers--Part 3

Personality, life situation, and belief-system.

Here's how those three points form my day....

I tend to take a weekly overview of action items rather than a daily view. What do I want to accomplish during the week? Sometimes (but not always) marketing is one of my short-term goals.

This transforms itself into daily tasks on my to-do list such as researching and prequalifying clients, calling clients, sending out packages, following up, and more.

However, it's not like I do research on Mondays, call clients on Tuesdays, send packages out Wednesday, and the like. That's way too structured for me. As long as I achieve these daily tasks at some point during the week, I'm happy. One week, I may get all the tasks done on Wednesday. The next week, I may get them all accomplished on Tuesday and Thursday. But they all get done. Just not on a particular day, at a particular hour.

So, what should an indexer schedule for any one particular week? That depends on where you are in the world of indexing.

A typical week for a new indexer would need to include more time devoted to learning indexing.

A typical week for a mid-stream indexer would need to include more marketing.

A typical week for a long-time indexer would need to include business expansion and service to the field.

However, there seem to be action items that are specific for each "indexer age".

For instance, long-time indexers do not have a need to spend time or thought developing and trying out a business name (unless they are expanding, or such).

For new indexers, action items that can be transformed into everyday tasks can be found in a previous article in this column: "Over 80 Productive Things To Do".

At first glance, this article just looks like a list of things to do between USDA lessons. Another look at this list shows that it really is a rough blueprint for what to do to be an indexer.

However, an in-depth look at this article reveals exactly what a typical day in the life of an indexer is like. One day, you might need to send off your membership form to ASI. However, this isn't something you do everyday. But it's still something that's done by new, mid-stream, and long-time indexers. Professional development is another area that is always done by all indexer ages.

Scrutinize this article and determine what your typical day will look like tomorrow, one year from now, five years from now. What your typical day looks like will be entirely up to you. Your typical day as a new indexer will take a completely different form when you have been indexing five years.

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