How Do You Decide Which Goals to Work on First?

Hey instructors!

As online instructors, we often juggle multiple goals—launching new courses, boosting engagement, refining content, and more. With so much on our plates, deciding what to tackle first can be a challenge. Prioritizing effectively is key to staying productive and avoiding burnout.

How do you decide which goals to work on first?

Do you focus on what’s most urgent, what aligns with your long-term vision, or what brings the biggest impact? Everyone’s process is different, and we’d love to hear yours!

Share your thoughts in the comments below and help inspire others to organize and achieve their goals effectively!

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Salman Alhiary

Hey Marina,

Nice question.

I split my time for several goals/tracks:

1- Run the business: I reply to emails, answer questions, and check my courses and website.

2- Course creation: I create new content for my upcoming course.

3- Blogging: I create a new blog post on my website.

4- Digital marketing: I take care of LinkedIn and SEO stuff on my website, email marketing, campaigns, and promotions.

5- Development: enhance existing courses, blogs, … etc

6- Learning: learn something new in my niche.

I use the Time Steam app to track my time, but I couldn't be fair! Always one or two categories would be missed :)

I hope that helps.

Kind regards / Salman

Habibur_Rahmn574

I am creating an course on data analysis. I have already got 24000+ members in my Facebook group on this topic.

My first priority is to launch the course, covering the most essential content while ignoring less important topics, considering my target audience. I aim to balance quality and speed. I have identified some gaps and want to launch the course as soon as possible to take advantage of the opportunity. However, I don't want to create a poorly developed course that fails to meet students' needs.

Once the course is live, I will dedicate time every day to marketing, understanding performance, gathering feedback, and adjusting the strategy as needed.

PuneetGupta453

that's good insights.

DiogoAlvesd487

The first is revenue. The second is fun. And revenue is usually really fun :)

RonErez

I focus on three things:

Responding to Students: I always respond to reviews and questions right away—it’s the most important to me.
Updating Courses: Then, I update my existing courses to keep them fresh and helpful.
Creating New Courses: Lastly, I work on new courses to grow my content and reach more learners.

This order helps me stay on track and keep my students happy.

KylePew

I focus first on existing students and courses. Once I feel those are both in a good place, then I focus on creating new courses.

Existing students and Courses:
This includes my QA and updating/tweaking the existing course content and new content.

I want to make sure the existing students are happy and learning what they've come to my course to learn. If they're not happy and learning, then a new course won't do as well with the existing students. I've found that if my existing content is doing well, questions are answered, reviews are coming in positive, then it's time to create something new that warrants a whole new course and not just updates to existing courses.

VijeshJain

A very good question. Well asked. This goes with the weather. For example, in the last more than 3 months I have been refining my existing courses and the more I refine I find the need even more. The result is that I have not been able to finish the new course I started taking 4 months back. Now after completing a major chunk of refining work, I find that the course I had made and completed almost 90% require rethinking and perhaps to be created all over again.

I also make sure that if I find anything in my existing course is below par, I take it on priority assuming the new course launch can wait.