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Working From Home Being Productively Unproductive
By Jeffery Wood | October 14, 2009
Prefer to listen? (Not a transcript)
[podcast]http://www.sweatyshop.com/audio/productivelyunproductive.mp3[/podcast]
Or should that be: Unproductively Productive
As I sit here trying to figure out how to word this, I realize there’s only one thing to do: Confess.
I fell into the bane of many work at home based people: being so busy that you get very little done. I’m going to hang up a sign on today that reads ‘Productivity Killer Was Here’
I spent several hours taking care of e-mail, building/maintaining relationships on Twitter, watching instructional videos, comparing website layouts, changing widgets around, re-setting up Adsense, and changing my WordPress blog’s theme around.
Sounds great doesn’t it? Too bad a few hours work ended up taking me 6. I’m now working on one of the three blog posts I was going to write today and I probably will table the other two until later tonight or tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and there’s the e-mail messages I was going to write.
Everything I did was for business, I didn’t do very much “goofing off” at all, so I was rather productive in that sense, but instead of sitting down and focusing on one thing at a time, I bounced all over the place and I don’t multitask well at all.
The amount of actual TIME I spent on any one thing wouldn’t have changed (well, except for Twitter) but where I lost time was in the starting and stopping, remembering where I left off and getting back into the mindset of what I was doing.
This is compounded by the fact that I actually perform better working in short, concentrated bursts rather than long, drawn out sessions. But instead of, for example, spending 20 minutes for e-mails and then switching to something else, I was constantly hopping back and forth between windows, doing a sentence here and being witty there (attempting to be witty anyway).
Even while writing this post I’ve jumped in and out (bathroom breaks are allowed). So do yourself a favor, break up your tasks into small bite-sized chunks, whatever that means to you (for me, it’s not very long) and don’t switch to anything else unless you have to.
If you have something you need to do suddenly pop into your head (which contributed to my downfall) jot it down on a sticky note and come back to it later.
If you are one of those obnoxiously organized people then you probably already have a list of your daily goals sitting next to you, so just jot it down on that. DO NOT stop to figure out where to fit that new thing in until you are done with whatever it was that was interrupted by that invasive thought.
Not being productive costs you. If you truly believe that your time is valuable, then treat it as valuable. “Time is money” isn’t just an old cliche’ attributed to greedy corporate lawyers, it’s a truth that you can earn more money in less time by being productive instead of “a little bit here and a little bit there”.
One of the masters of time management is Jimmy D. Brown, and a great product that would help me a lot if I did what he said to do, is Homepreneur Habits. He works 3 or 4 hours a day and gets more done than most people do in 8 hours just because of how he organizes his schedule.
How does he do it? By breaking his time into (can you guess?) chunks, and he is consistent in his time management. Yes that’s an affiliate link. Yes I have read the book. Yes I agree with everything he says. It makes sense and works…well, it works when I actually do what it says anyway, when I do my “own thing” it’s usually more of a disaster.
I actually didn’t intend to write about Homepreneur Habits, but as I was writing the part about breaking your time into chunks to be productive I remembered that book.
It is a great resource and for you obnoxiously organized people, you are going to love how he lays everything out by the day and hour.
For you not-obnoxiously-organized people, you will also find the layout easy to do and adapt.
For those completely undisciplined people like me, the book (if you are disciplined enough to read it, it is short and it is a fast read) still has tips and tricks you can use.
So if you want to learn from a master of ‘working from home productivity’ download Homepreneur Habits now. If you are content and happy with how you are spending your time, then good for you.
Now I’ve got to figure out where I saved that thing, oh wait, I need to check Twitter first……
- Jeffery
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About Jeffery: Jeffery Wood, author of "Learn How To Set Up Your Own WordPress Blog And Forum" is a Part-Time Internet Marketer. |
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- Time Management Implementation – Part One
Topics: Productivity, business, time management | 3 Comments »
October 15th, 2009 at 13:13
Jeffery,
I live by the clock. I stop every 2 hours to sit quietly. Does wonders for the mind and cures me of ‘mental hurry’, which seems so normal but is not natural. I also break down each 2 hour session into 20-30 blocks for separate tasks: twitter, blog postings, backlinks, etc.
The alarm can be an entrepreneur’s best friend. When I ignore the loud wake-up call to my thoughts and other activities I know it’s all on me. It’s helped me to become much more responsible and efficient.
RB
.-= Ryan ´s last blog ..Ryan Biddulph Quotes: Thinking =-.
October 15th, 2009 at 14:05
The alarm is a great idea, especially for those distracted by watching the clock.
– Jeffery
November 11th, 2009 at 03:39
A good post on “Working From Home Being Productively Unproductive”.And I would like to say that I’m living my dream of owning my own business and working from home earning equally or more than the regular jobs by using http://debtfreeliving.ownanewbusiness.com.
Thanks,
Karim
Own a new business