The Lord

Some random tips about using work time and attention wisely.

Making the most of your time is crucial to online success. You have to pay more attention to make more money! It’s far easy to end up ‘time poor’ with too many *ideas* and no action. Especially if you are new to doing business online, you need to really focus on what you are doing with your attention and how beneficial it is to your bottomline. It’s a crucial business practice that will define who you are and your potential to take advantage of opportunities that arise as a result of your hard work and research.

A good example would be how I have spent the past 2 months, I have literally done nothing. With the exception of a few client projects my network creation has basically stopped. FWIW, nothing to me is still sitting in front of the laptop, just not working. Mainly researching new platforms, networks, communities and catching up on web development changes and industry news. I use this research to evolve my ‘competitive webmaster’ skills and stay above the fold.

Tracing several different industries and disciplines with the general ‘Online Marketing’ area, you really need to be 100% effective with your time. I really know this from learning the hard way and ’spreading myself way too thin’, not quite too thin to not be effective - more stretching to burn out. Burn out is *not* *cool*! Just don’t go there.

Stay fresh, you will live happier and far longer!

I now have an altered work strategy and time schedule, I can *always* take advantage of the moment and embrace any creative flows or areas that need time devloted to them. I find the most creative flow occurs when it is threatened - having the flexibility to rearrange priorities is very important for maximising work and idea flow.

Lately I have started to take serious breaks between work bouts and just research and reflect on where everything is heading, from mobile, to web standards, to social communties and tracing new competitors and revenue models. There is a lot for the professional webmaster to know, especially when you run multiple websites in lot’s of different markets. By long breaks I mean 1-2 months of doing nothing but keeping things ticking and research, no growth (well a little), just learning.

While it’s a very good thing for the mind, body and your general life to break habits, it can potentially be detrimental to your income if you indulge for too long.

The impact of slowed passive income is huge. In 8 weeks I could have easily launched and partially optimised one new site every 2 days - that’s 28 new websites, ranking and semi ranking on target keyphrases. The long term prospect of loosing the ‘production’ and ‘deployment’ time is not to be underestimated! BUT! Sanity and the ability to semi detach from your online work environment can be essential to remaining balanced.

Taking a long break each year, or even 6 months is not only a great recreational technique, but a motivator (loss of income researching, get revenge faster) but also one of the only ways I can balance my work life, personal life and genuine passion for the Web!@! Lot’s of very successful people use this technique, after doing this for over 3 years as a solo operator I strongly advise trying it for yourself if you are a solo or small operator.

During this down/holiday/whatever time I also recommend auditing your own business and having a good look at the ‘low hanging fruit’ you could easily pick up! As well as replicating areas that are making easy money. For me more attention always lead to more money. Focus your attention, as there are lot’s of things you *could* be doing - but what ’should’ you be doing?

So I wonder what works for you? How do you ‘balance your time’? Where do you/should you be focusing your attention?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.