How to Manage Your Time as an Internet Marketer
June 10, 2007 · Print This Article
You’ve opened your Internet marketing business, and days have passed with little progress. What’s going on? You have discipline, a great idea, a good product, but the day just seems to keep slipping away and when you look up, the family is upon you. You have accomplished next to nothing.
Anybody who is in Internet Marketing will tell you that it is extremely easy to get distracted. Add to it the tasks you need to accomplish like researching, networking and email responses, it’s a wonder that you get anything done.
Add to that, the phone rings, the laundry is waiting and the dishes need to be done. You are working from your home, and all those house chores are part of your existence.
So, how do you manage your time effectively as an Internet marketer and avoid the traps that get you bogged down to the point of getting nothing done. Here are some basic tips to keep in mind when you sit down at your computer to start marketing your product.
Create a Daily To-Do List: At the end of each day or first thing in the morning, write up a list of things you must get accomplished that day. Keep that list with you and work your way down the list until you finish. This does not include dishes, laundry or talking to the neighbors. You are on the job, and if you went out to a job, you would not be talking to the neighbors or doing your laundry. You would be working and this is no different.
Focus Is Power: They say Knowledge Is Power and to a great extent that’s true. However, without focus, all the knowledge in the world will be useless. Keep telling yourself that your list is your boss and these are assignments you must complete to keep your job. Create signs, hang up cues, pictures, sing songs – whatever it take, stay focus and concentrate on moving down your list.
Get Back On Track – Get Up!: When your mind wanders or you start surfing the Internet aimlessly, get up and leave the work area for a few minutes. Get a drink of water, then come back with a fresh, ready-to-work outlook. You’ll be amazed at what five minutes relaxing your mind can do for your concentration levels.
Use Timers: Predetermine how long you should spend on certain tasks, then set a timer and work until it dings. When it does, you are done with project and move on to the next task, reset your timer and do the same thing. You don’t want to work on the same thing all day or you will burn out. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your business won’t be either.
Pull The Old Switcheroo: This is a variation of the timer technique. Sometimes you’ve stared at the same thing for so long, you can’t see straight. If there’s something you are working on that you just can’t seem to stay focused, stop and move on to another task for a while. Come back in a couple hours and try it again when you feel more focused.
Break Things Down: How do you eat an elephant? If you do choose to eat an elephant, you would eat it one bite at a time. You wouldn’t try and eat the whole elephant in one gulp. The same is true of projects.
If you have a big task, it can seem overwhelming and you’ll end up feeling like you’re getting nowhere unless you break it down. Try breaking bigger tasks down into smaller ones that can easily be marked off your list so that even at a glance it seems like you’ve accomplished something which you have.
If you get to the end of your day, and there is something left on your list, look at how much you have accomplished, don’t beat yourself up if there’s something left and transfer it to what you need to do the next day.
Cut yourself some slack if you don’t get everything accomplished as quickly as you had hoped in the beginning. Building a business is like painting. It takes time, patience and the ability to be creative and persistent to achieve the effect you want.
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