Time Management Implementation – Intro

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Time Management Implementation – Intro

By Administrator | April 16, 2009

So in my last blog called Stop The Madness I had unintentionally combines a couple of different posts into one. I talked about time management, productivity, being overwhelmed, etc… I told you about a great resource that I had and recommended for getting control over things.

I thought I’d write a series on actually implementing some of those things I have learned from it and from other sources as well. The first thing I did was to buy one of those big desktop type calendars. You know the kind, they are something like 18″ X 20″ with big squares to write in.

I also bought a daily appointment organizer thingy, it’s larger than a paperback book, but not much. Each page has a Date, then the hours listed with blanks by the hours. The idea is of course at 8:am on Wednesday Oct 15th you can pencil in whatever appointment you have going on. Between these two things I intend to come up with a general overview and daily specifics.

What I have done so far is this: I have set actual business days and hours. I do not do this full time, I do have another job where I work graveyard. I will be doing that for a while. So I want to do like the claims others make and work only 3 hours a day or 5 hours a week.

In my opinion, after giving it some thought, I think when you are first starting out with an internet business that you need to do the 3 hours a day and whether or not you drop down to 5 hours a week depends on what you’re doing and why.

For example, if I created an information product to sell, I might spend the 3 hours a day writing and editing the product, setting up the sales pages, creating whatever accounts I need, etc. Once that all that was done I could go into what I call “maintainence mode” where I spend 5 hours a week participating (not just posting) in forums, reading blogs, writing and submitting articles, etc. I’m maintaining or keeping it running.

However if I am doing Internet Marketing meaning either multiple products or different markets then I might spend 3 hours a day on the first one, drop it down to 5 hours a week but take my remaining time and research/improve the next one.

In any case what I was doing was spending every available second on it sometimes getting a lot done and sometimes wasting more time by “being productive” than by actually goofing off. In other words doing things without a focus so nothing really shows for the effort.

I have decided on this: Monday through Friday I will work from whenever I get home from my other job (that unfortunately is variable) until 10am. If I get home at 9:30, too bad, I’m only working that half hour. Monday through Thursday I will also work 4pm-6pm. This will help offset the variance of not knowing when I will get home.

I will take Friday afternoons off because I have to get up and leave early for a weekly meeting. I will do a morning/afternoon shift on Saturdays but I haven’t decided definite times, and I will not work on Sundays.

So the limited hours will actually help give me a sense of urgency, because time runs out and then I can’t (won’t) work until the next “shift”. If I want/need something done really badly then I had better not get lost on Twitter or Facebook.

My next task, which I started but won’t write about until next time is in what I do when. In other words, and this isn’t set in stone, I might do forums on Tuesdays and Thursdays, write articles on Fridays, etc. What I have decided is to do things in chunks. So on the proverbial 3 hour day on a Tuesday I might do an hour of networking (forums for example) and hour of research and an hour of something else. Or maybe a full time of research and the next shift of something else.

The other thing I know I will do is I will take care of my existing stuff first, then look into other stuff. I don’t know about you but I get lost in things, I start reading and going to the next article or website or whatever and then next thing I know, I run out of time and hadn’t posted to my blog yet. So my existing stuff is pretty defined (write a blog post or whatever) and takes a determined amount of time whereas venturing into researching a new market, or educating myself on seo or whatever can go on forever until it reaches a certain point.

By doing the existing stuff first I am guaranteed that I will actually maintain my existing product instead of letting it fall by the wayside, forgotten, abandoned, and alone.

Until next time,
– Jeffery

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Topics: Blogging Tips and Tricks, Productivity, blogging, time management | No Comments »