So, you've decided on what Online Business Opportunity you are going to go with. You relish the thought of being your own Boss. No one to tell you what to do, no clock to follow and the chance to take a break when you want to and not when the lunch hour dictates. Great. So, what do you do first?
When I first started my internet business it was not long before I started to realize I was wasting countless hours drifting from one task to another. A problem I think that is more akin to the world of online business. You receive new emails through the day with new opportunities or resources that you simply "must have". You have countless different sites that you want to research and learn from, hours of video footage to get through, websites to tweak and emails from your auto-responders to change. On top of this you have the daily routine of household business to attend, paying credit cards & bills, renewal insurance etc.
Occasionally, when I started making late payments on credit cards, simply because they had been buried under a pile of other "things to do", when I realized that auto-responder emails where sending out mail with incorrect links on because a week ago, in a fit of design flair, I had changed my blog account, and finally when I became to loose track of when and which sites I posted articles and posts to, I decided it was time for some serious daily planning.
You see, being your own boss is great, however, when there's no one to tell you what to do, when you should be doing it and how much you should get done each day, your work just blends into one big whirlwind of a little here and a little there.
So, I set up my daily planner. No longer would I allow distractions in the morning interrupting the beginning of my day, resulting with me working through to the early hours of the morning in a vain attempt to make up for lost time. I would schedule my day, hour by hour with different tasks to be completed each day.
For instance, I set aside an hour a day to write a new post / article / hubpage to keep my web presence relevant. I planned to spend an hour a day learning something new about my internet business, through videos, tutorials etc. I would set time aside to go through my emails and respond to all the questions, check through other mail for any genuine promotions that could benefit me. I started unsubscribing to emails that where insignificant rather than just letting my inbox become awash with rubbish. I checked through monthly subscriptions to make sure I was still using the services – this saved me a few dollars !!
I also set aside time for a morning break, lunch and afternoon coffee. Being an avid gym junkie, I know the importance of eating regular but had let it slip for too long. Also, I became aware of spending too many hours looking at the computer screen, the headaches were telling me that! I made time to get my files all sorted out. My desktop had started to become a sea of files and being a stickler for a clean desktop I finally made time to get round to sort them into the appropriate file locations.
After a month of following my new schedule my work capacity increased ten fold. I knew what I was doing each hour of the day and how to simply reschedule part of my day if I decided it was time for some Family time.
So, my advice to you. Enjoy the freedom of working for yourself, but remember, you are now your own BOSS. You set the tasks, the pace and the productivity which will absolutely see you achieve the dizzy heights of success in the online world, or see you crash and burn like so many do.
