In order to develop laser-sharp focus in all areas of your business, you first have to concentrate on focusing on the basics. There are some essential elements relevant to all businesses that are necessary to be done and that includes some important things that need to be done on a regular basis.

Here are a few:

Short, Medium and Long-Term planning: Plan your week, don’t fly by the seat of your pants without a blueprint.

Bookkeeping and Tax Filing: You may want to take this on yourself, or hire someone, but whichever you choose, your life will be much easier by taking care of this on a regular basis. I use Quicken to keep track of everything during the year.

Personally? The thought of preparing my own tax returns is about the equivalent of having all my teeth pulled, so I’ve been using the services of a wonderful tax preparer for the last few years. All I need do is run the reports from Quicken, send them to her and she takes care of the rest.

Ongoing Learning: Not to be confused with becoing an “information junkie”, continuing education is really important as long as it relates to your business and planning.

Goal-Setting:If you do not have your goals set yet for 2008, what are you waiting for? You wouldn’t get in the car without a destination, right? or without a plan to get there?

If you haven’t sat down yet to draw up even a basic set of goals for 2008, shut off your computer right now (after reading this post, of course) and start writing them down.

Domain Name and Webhosting: If you do not have your domain names set up to auto-renews, take a few minutes to login to your domain registrar and check for any that are expiring soon. I’ve lost a good domain or two due to simply forgetting to renew and believe me, once it’s gone, it’s nearly impossible to get it back.

I’ve only ever used GoDaddy.com as my domain registrar, so I can’t speak on any other experience, but GoDaddy does an excellent job of sending you numerous emails as far as 90 days in advance of when a domain (you have registered with them) is set for renewal.

Does your webhost send you an invoice or is the billing automatically deducted from your Paypal account or credit card? I personally opt for the automatic deduction so that I don’t have to worry about paying it, but I also make sure to check my bank account to make sure I’m being charged correctly.

Filing and Paperwork: Even in an internet based business, there is going to be some paperwork and filing that you’ll probably need to do. There’s nothing more distracting than piles of paper or bills that you dread going through because you’ve been putting it off. Taking just 1/2 hour each week will help alleviate any backlog.

Contact Management: “Now, what did I do with that business card or post-it note?”

Sound familiar? I do not have a business card case nor do I like them. They are bulky and take too much time to search through when you need to find a phone # quickly. Of course, I exchange cards with people, but what I do is use the very simple, yet very organized contact system in my Thunderbird email client to store all my contacts information.

If you’re not familiar with Thunderbird, it’s Mozilla’s answer to Outlook, except it is open source and very powerful. I know some people use “The Bat”, although having never used it, I can’t speak for it’s features.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for about 18 months and love it. It’s installed on both my desktop and laptop.

Backups: There is no room for procrastination in this area. You simply have got to back up your business data and have a recovery plan in place for your business. I have seen too many heartbreaks from people who have worked so hard at their business, only to have to start from scratch because they didn’t back up their data.