Time Management

The True Key To Online Success

I once read that time management is a polite way of stating self-management because the simple fact is that an inability to control your own time is an indication of inability to control yourself. With the advent of the internet there are more and more demands being placed upon everybody’s time and in business, both online and offline, we are all becoming far less efficient due to time demands.

With offline business we are often kept in focus on the job in hand by a boss looking over our shoulder or a deadline that has to be met. Time management for the person who works from home does not have the benefit of forced discipline. This is a major reason why many people that attempt to build an online income are destined to failure. They are too easily distracted.

Another problem with working from home is multi-tasking, each of us are attempting to focus on two, three, four or more different tasks at a time. This is where I get into trouble with many of my lady readers because most females claim their ability to multi task is something they do so much better than men. But here goes anyway: “Multi-tasking is inefficient.” It leaves many loose ends uncompleted it is a case of doing many things in a mediocre fashion rather than a single thing done efficiently.

So let us take a look at an ideal day for a person attempting to build an income working from home:

Your day should be broken down into blocks of two hours, each block clearly defined in your daily diary. During these two hours you will spend 90 minutes focused on a single subject and working towards a pre-set goal. At the end of 90 minutes you will stop, leave your office, take a walk, take a coffee break, maybe phone somebody who is nothing to do with your business. In other words you switch off from business totally. This break will rejuvenate your mind ready for the next two hour time block that will be focused on something else.

What you must not do is leave your email browser switched on. Emails in general are a waste of your precious time and less than 5% are necessary. In my day I spend 30 minutes in the morning before my first two-hour time block to go through emails. At the start of my 30 minute block I quickly go down the emails and set priorities as follows:

- Priority 1 I read and respond to. These are money making emails.

- Priority 2 are personal emails.

- Priority 3 are emails I will read if I have time.

- Priority 4 are all deleted without opening.

After this I shut down Outlook Express until the final 15 minutes of my working day. In this final session I am ruthless. I attend to priority 1 and 2 emails and then every email that hasn’t been opened is deleted.

Why do I do this? Simple, I tried to open all emails for years while I failed at internet marketing. They were the biggest challenge to my time management program and often took up half of my available working hours. Throughout this time I earned peanuts. I never started making my online business work until I mastered time management and had the sense to push every intruder in my day out of the way unless it involved making my business work.

When you master time management it is time to start building an online business.

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