Staying Motivation
Ask for Advice
Here’s an easy way to boost your productivity: Ask for advice from knowledgeable others about how to complete a task in the most efficient way.
Example #1: Let’s suppose you want to do something you’ve never done before, such as set up a blog. If a quick Google search doesn’t return the results you’re seeking, then ask knowledgeable bloggers how they’d set up a blog if they were brand new to blogging.
Example #2: Perhaps you’re trying to set up a new business while taking care of a new baby. If you worked at it long enough, you’d probably learn through trial and error a few tips that would make your business time more productive. But you can save yourself by going straight to the source and asking other work-at-home parents how they juggle family and work.
Example #3: Let’s suppose you want to learn how to create and upload promotional videos on YouTube. Instead of fumbling around with lighting, audio, software and your camera, you should instead search Google or ask for advice to find out how to quickly and easily put together videos. Asking will not only save time, it will also likely save you money as well.
Create a Challenge for Yourself
Another way to bring out your competitive spirit and become more productive is by creating challenges for yourself. This isn’t making a bet with anyone else.
Rather, it’s just pushing yourself to the limit to see how much you can accomplish.
You can do this on small daily tasks or large tasks.
Example: Let’s suppose you’re writing a book. You might set a timer for 30 minutes and see how many words you type in that time. Then reset the timer and try to beat your previous number of words.
You can also set up mid and long term challenges.
Example: You might record how many words you create on a weekly basis, and then try to always beat your previous record.
Or if you’ve already previously completed a task (such as writing a book), you might try to complete the task even faster the second time.
Tip: Do you know someone else who has a similar to-do list or goals? If so, you could race against each other to complete your tasks.
For example, you could race to see who completes a 100-page book first.
If it’s a business-oriented goal, then search business and marketing forums (like the WarriorForum.com) for people who are willing to join your challenges. Ideally, you should all create public blogs that you update on a daily basis.
Git-R-Dun Part 2
Just a bit ago I told you that perfectionism is procrastination’s twin sister. And that’s because they’re usually both symptoms of fear.
Procrastination can manifest in these two ways:
➢ Obvious procrastination. This is when you know you’re procrastinating. You have something to work on, but you just can’t get motivated to do it.
Example: If you have a report to write, you may find yourself staring at the blank screen or getting easily distracted by other things (such as watching YouTube videos).
➢ Subtle procrastination. This one is a little trickier because it disguises itself. Instead of you just sitting around when you should be working on something, you instead busy yourself with something else (while rationalizing that this new task is important).
Indeed, you may even go so far as to reorder your to-do list so that you can procrastinate on a specific task.
Just as with perfectionism, the key to beating procrastination is to
figure out WHY you’re procrastinating.
How does it serve you? How does it “protect” you from one of your fears?
In some cases, it’s not immediately obvious to you why you’re procrastinating.
If so, then you need to do a brain dump. Simply take out a couple clean sheets of paper and write, “why am I procrastinating?” at the top of the paper. Then spend 30 minutes writing everything that comes into your head (no censoring, editing or analyzing). If you can’t think of anything to write, then just keep writing the question until something does pop into your head. Usually after about 20 minutes, our subconscious mind lets down its defenses, so that’s when you’ll start getting real answers to your question.
Once you’ve determined the problem, then it’s up to you to find a solution
In most cases, simply acknowledging the problem will be enough to allow yourself to start taking serious action.
Git-R-Dun
Your mom probably taught you to do the best you can. In school, your teachers insisted on you doing your very best job (and your grades reflected your efforts). And so you might be tempted to make sure everything is perfect on every task you do.
Sometimes you do need to be perfect.
Sometimes.
But you also need to have the wisdom to know when you can turn out work and complete tasks that are less than perfect.
You need to know that sometimes you’ll turn out
average work and improve it as you go.
Take a look at the company Microsoft. They don’t put out perfect software products. Instead, they do what they can up front and release imperfect software. The reason they do this is twofold:
1. They’ll still make money. Because they offer free patches and upgrades, people are confident enough to essentially “beta test” their software. (Even when they’re no longer officially in beta.)
2. Microsoft knows that they’ll improve their product faster by releasing it sooner. Think about it: thousands of people using their software will uncover the bugs much faster than a handful of beta testers. And so the company releases software that’s not yet perfect because releasing it is the fastest way to improve it.
Now before we delve into this further, let me make a note: Sometimes your work will never be perfect. If you try to make perfect something that can’t be perfected, you’re only wasting time. You need to do the best you can and move on (and make improvements later if need be).
The other thing you need to recognize is whether you’re using perfectionism as a way to not finish a product.
Indeed, perfectionism is procrastination’s twin sister: Except perfectionism makes you FEEL like you’re really making progress.
How can you tell?
Simple: If you’re missing deadlines because you don’t think your project is “ready,” then some sort of fear (of success or failure) may be revealing itself in the form of perfectionism. It’s one thing to want to do a good job… it’s an entirely different matter to have a project stall because you don’t think it’s “perfect” yet.
Getting over perfectionism requires a couple steps, including:
Step #1: Figure out why you can’t move forward. That is, what “pay off” do you get if you don’t finish the project? Why are you afraid to move forward?
Sometimes people can’t move forward due to a fear of failure. That’s pretty common. When you spend a long time thinking about how good it will feel to achieve your goals, the prospect of failing can seem frightening.
Tip: If this is your fear, remember that you don’t get just one chance to find success. Thomas Edison completed thousands upon thousands of experiments as he sought to create the light bulb. If he thought he had just one shot, he would have quit when his very first idea failed.
On the flip side, sometimes people fear success. They don’t know what success will bring – they only know it’s scary because it IS unknown.
Example: Someone who’s looking to make a lot of money with a project may suddenly start worrying about something like relatives asking for money, complicated tax paperwork and similar. And in doing so, he talks himself out of wanting to be successful.
In still other cases, some folks feel like they don’t deserve success. And so they sabotage themselves. Being a perfectionist (and thus never finishing anything) is one way to do it, while avoiding the guilt that goes along other behaviors like procrastination.
This step is the hard part.
Once you can be truthful with yourself and admit you’re using perfectionism to avoid finishing a task (and determine why), you’ll be well on your way to moving past perfectionism…
Step #2: Imagine the worst case scenario.
Perfectionism is usually caused by some sort of fear. But if you really let your mind go wild and imagine the WORST that can happen… you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find it’s not all that frightening as you thought.
So go ahead and imagine your worst possible fear about your goals and this project
Let your mind go wild about what could happen if the project wasn’t absolutely perfect. And then imagine the worst case about what would happen if you succeeded or failed on the overall project.
Example: Maybe the person who’s working on a new business is suddenly gripped by the fear of begging relatives and complex taxes.
If you let your mind run with those fears, you’ll see there not so scary.
Example: The newly successful person can instantly eliminate the fear of complex taxes by hiring a good tax accountant.
Step #3: Commit to moving forward.
Once you’ve uncovered your specific reason for perfectionism and imagined your worst fears, you’ll feel a whole lot better. And that’s the perfect time to take a massive step towards your goal (as action will make the rest of your fear melt away).
Example: If you’re doing something like writing a book, force yourself to write the introduction… and give yourself permission for it to be awful (you can go back later and edit it).
Not To Phony
Save time and avoid getting distracted by eliminating
as many common distractions as possible.
That means you should shut off the cell phone, turn the ringer off on the landline and turn off the TV. (Music is ok if can focus on your work and not on the music itself.) If you find yourself doing things like staring out the window, close those blinds.
If you’re the type who has a cell phone attached to your hip at all times, the thought of shutting off that cell phone may be… frightening.
If you’re used to answering all calls and replying to all text messages as they come in, you might feel a little anxious about disconnecting from your friends, family and colleagues like that.
Relax. You’ll get used to it. And you may even find it enjoyable and liberating. ☺
Tip: Naturally, there are times when you can’t disconnect completely. If that’s the case, screen your calls. Only answer those that are absolutely necessary, and let the others leave messages. If possible, have someone else field your calls for a few hours so that you can focus.
How About Some Time Management Tips
Recently life has come at us fast monkeys in the trees to catch and alligators below to wrestle. You’ve got a million and one things to do, both professionally and personally.
Many of them feel urgent, even vital. But are they?
Of course NOT. And that’s why you need to prioritize your tasks, put them into a to do list (more on that in a later tip) and work through them in order.
If you don’t, you’ll end up going through your to do list in an inefficient way… perhaps doing work that only feels urgent (but really shouldn’t be that high on the priority list).
Let me give you a few examples…
Example #1: Will the world come to a screeching halt if you don’t make your bed today? Nope. And so you may consider that a lower priority as opposed to some of your professional activities like getting to work on time, answering emails from customers and so on.
Example #2: Your friend asks you to do something. It’s pretty urgent… to him. And somehow you feel like whatever is urgent to him is also urgent to you. But here’s the thing: You have your OWN urgent to do list. If you spend all your time helping others with their to do lists, you’ll never get yours done. And that means in many cases you’ll need to prioritize your work as more important than another’s work.
Note: See the section for “saying no” for tips on how to deal with these situations.
Some tasks will be fairly easy to prioritize.
Example: If you have kids, then getting them off to school and getting them to their activities will tend to be high on your priority list. This is especially true if you tend to put family ahead of other priorities and goals.
But what about other tasks that you can’t immediately determine how to prioritize?
Example: Which of two professional tasks should you tackle first?
It’s easier than you think.
The key is to first sit down and figure out what you want in life. What goals are most important to you?
Go ahead, make a list of everything you want in life and then rank them in order of importance. Once you’ve done that, create plans (blueprints) as to how you’ll achieve those goals.
Now that you’ve done this exercise, you’ve basically created an overall to do list for yourself. Whenever you’re trying to figure out how to prioritize a task, ask yourself this question:
“Does this task put me a step closer to reaching my goals?”
If not, put the task as a low priority.
If it DOES put you a step closer to your goals, then figure out which goal it puts you closer to.
If the task puts you closer to your #1 goal, then that particular task should be a high priority. If the particular task puts you closer to a goal that’s ranked lower on your list, than the priority level should also be lower.
Let me give you a fictional example to show you what I mean…
Goals (in order of importance):
#1: Spend time with your wife .
#2: Spend time with your kids.
#3: Keep up your journal.
Overall To Do List (ranked from high priority to low priority):
Take wife out to lunch. (helps achieve goal #1)
Take a day off go for a drive fall colors. (helps achieve goal #1)
Sing in the church choir with your daughter. (helps achieve goal #2)
Take my boys turkey hunting. (helps achieve goal #2)
Put the journal on the desk. (helps achieve goal #3)
Outline my memoir book (helps achieve goal #3)
Write my book (helps achieve goal #3)
Birds of a Feather
If you have a goal of being a best-selling author, find friends and mentors who either have achieved that same goal or are also pursuing a successful writing career. It is important to surround yourself with people that can associate with your goal and passion, people who understand the burning desire to succeed and can encourage when you meet with disappointments.
Earning Income Online: Passion and Reason
When it comes to earning income online, there are many paths you can take. From infoproduct creation to blogging to affiliate marketing, all roads lead to the same place, making money online. If you’ve decided to take on the challenge of earning income online, congratulations! It’s easy to get to get started but those that really succeed have two things in common, passion and reason.
Passion and reason are the driving forces behind and successful venture, whether it’s online or not. Without passion, you aren’t going to be able to motivate yourself to complete the work you need to do in order to succeed. Without reason you’ll find yourself hopping from project to project, being lead down the wrong path or spending money when you don’t need to.
In fact, both passion and reason are so important that they have been part of the overall plan for success for centuries. Benjamin Franklin himself had some advice that should be heeded by anyone who is earning income online.
“If passion drive you, let reason hold the reins.”
This statement drives home several important points that, although intended to be about earning income online, are very appropriate for this situation. You need both passion and reason to succeed, but reason must control your passions.
It’s very important to be passionate when you start an online business. Earning an online income is something that is challenging and exciting. It’s very different from other career paths and it requires you to think outside of the box and approach things from a different perspective. Without enough passion, you might give up.
Passion can also help you through those times where it feels like nothing is going right. Success does not happen overnight in any field, and especially in Internet marketing. If you expect to put up a website and instantly see money rolling in the next morning, you’re going to be disappointed. Passion will help drive you to keep trying when success isn’t instant.
Reason is also essential in making money online. It is very easy to get distracted online and lead down the wrong path. There are literally hundreds of ways to make money online and if you don’t let reason help you decide which is the right path, your passions will take you in a million directions. Reason has to be guiding forced behind what you do so you’ll have enough clarity to set measurable goals and carry them out to success.
Since success doesn’t come overnight, your reason needs to help you understand this fact and work out a plan to carry you through the times when your efforts aren’t producing much. If you know that you’ve set a goal and you are passionate about it, your reason will help keep you focused on your plan and doing the work that needs to be done.
As Benjamin Franklin tells us, reason has to be the tempering force for passion. When it comes to making money online, both passion and reason are important but remember to use reason to control passion.
Business Mindset Do You Have It?
Dan
There’s a funny thing that happens to people when they start their own online business. I’m not sure if it stems from the tendency for online marketers to use hype-filled sales letters with words like “quick” and “easy” or if it’s from misconceptions about working at home. Whatever the reason is, there are a lot of people out there who think that once they set up a website or even start thinking about starting an online business that money will start falling out of the sky!
You have to work to get ahead in life…and this even applies to working online. There are two types of people that start businesses online. There are those that either have the business experience to know that rewards only come from hard work and there are those that believe the hype and pretend to work instead of actually getting things done. If you’re in the second category, this is your wakeup call!
You are not going to find online business success by spending all of your time in forums. You’re not going to see those commission checks or Paypal deposits coming in by chasing down the next big idea online. You won’t see it by telling yourself that you deserve the afternoon off instead of doing what you should be doing on your path to online success.
The only way you are going to make your online business work is to work at it. Working for yourself requires a great deal of self discipline. If you don’t have self discipline, you’re going to need to build up that strength before you’ll see any success. You need a strong work ethic so you can do what you need to do, even if your favorite show is on or it’s a beautiful day to walk in the park.
The first step is to set clear reachable goals for yourself. Be sure to set goals that are realistic for the next week and the next month. Write down your goals somewhere near your workspace so you can keep yourself focused.
Next, you’re going to have to identify what is work and what is not. When you work online, you may develop a clever way of tricking yourself into thinking that you are working when you are not. Searching for your website’s name on Google or reading the latest blog post from your favorite motivational author is not working. Creating content, developing backlinks, writing a product or taking part in advertising is working. There is a lot of time for all of those other activities, but save them for after you’ve completed your goal for the day.
If you’re not used to being self disciplined, it may take some time and some practice for you to develop this skill. But it will be well worth it when you start seeing results from your efforts. As long as you remember that you have to work to get ahead online and keep your goals nearby, you’ll be able to get the work done that you need to.
If you’re ready to see a detailed version of this plan, Affiliatenaire will teach you all you need to know in 3 to 4 hours per week without emptying your wallet.
Starting a Home Business: Dedication
The road to self-employment is fraught with ups and downs. There may be days, weeks or months where you don’t see the return you expect from your efforts. Some people take this as a sign that their business idea isn’t working. However, smart home business owners know that if they stick with their original plans and make changes as necessary they can see improvement over time. Success with your home business may not happen overnight, but if you stay dedicated you’ll surely succeed.
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