Down Time To UP Time
If you’re like most folks, you probably spend a lot of time waiting…
• Sitting on the train, waiting to get to your destination.
• Stuck in traffic, waiting for the congestion to clear.
• Waiting at the doctor’s office, waiting for the mechanic, waiting for the parent-teacher conference to start, waiting for the commercial to be over so you can get back to watching your favorite TV program, waiting to pay at the grocery store…
You can manage your time better by turning your downtime into productive time. For example:
⇒ Answer emails on the train.
Tip: If you don’t have a connection to the Internet, then download your emails into an email client like Outlook Express before you get on the train, answer them and put them in your outbox so they go out the next time you connect.
⇒ Create your to do lists while waiting for a doctor’s appointment.
⇒ Use a voice recorder to create verbal to do lists, get organized or make notes while you’re stuck in traffic. You can also catch up on your “reading” by listening to iPod books or books on CDs.
⇒ Pay bills online or create your shopping list during commercial breaks while you’re watching TV.
⇒ Return short phone calls while walking between a parking lot and your office or store.
Bottom line: If you have (involuntary) downtime, you probably can fit a small task into that timeslot.
Uncover Your Personal Time Wasters
We’ve talked about some of the most common ways to fritter away your precious minutes, such as by surfing around online, checking email, answering unnecessary phone calls, replying to unnecessary text messages and so on.
But you probably have a few time-wasters that are unique to you. It’s your job to uncover (and overcome) them.
One way to do this is to just keep a log of everything
you do every day for the next week or so.
To do this, stop every half hour and record EVERYTHING you did in the previous 30 minutes. You should also note when you don’t do anything at all.
You might uncover time wasters such as:
➢ Daydreaming. You might be reading something and a page or two later you realize you have NO idea what you just read. Or maybe you’re about to write something, but you end up staring at the blank screen, daydreaming.
➢ Getting distracted by something trivial and needing to “fix” it. For example, if your chair squeaks, you might find yourself running off to get oil to fix it.
➢ Getting visually distracted, such as when you look out the window and see cats fighting in your yard.
➢ Getting distracted by noise, such as when you find yourself sitting near an open window, trying to eavesdrop on the neighbors. ☺
➢ Feeling restless or uncomfortable. You might think your clothes are “scratchy” so you change clothes. Or maybe the room is too hot so you turn up the A/C.
➢ Remembering suddenly that you have something even more urgent to do, like pay the phone bill or set up an appointment. Instead of making a note of these things and doing them all at once, you waste time by breaking your focus to do them at the exact moment you think about it.
These are just a few examples.
Obviously, you’ll uncover your own time-wasters that aren’t on this list. If you have any troubles eliminating these distractions, see the section later in this report on moving past procrastination.
Use Weebly.com
Weebly is yet another Web 2.0 property that can help you get higher rankings and more traffic. Weebly offers an easy way to create a small webpage that is set up on the Weebly.com domain.
They have a very simple drag-and-drop interface, and you’re easily able to add links to your website as well as quality content that will entice people to visit your website. In order to get the most out of Weebly, you want to make use of the different text and graphics features that will be attractive to prospective visitors.
Human Distractions
You can eliminate all sort of distractions around you… but if you don’t also eliminate the human distractions, you’re not going to get much done.
If you’re working at home, your roommates, spouse and/or children will keep popping in to chat if you let them. At work, your colleagues will stop by with questions, feedback or just to talk about last night’s ending on their favorite reality TV show. And even in public (like sitting at a Starbucks) you can’t get away from people who want to use up some of your precious time with trivial matters.
So here’s what you need to do:
Let everyone around you know that you need
an uninterrupted period of time to get your work done.
Here are tips to help you communicate your needs at home, at work and in public:
⇒ If you’re in public, use “don’t bother me” body language and other cues. Don’t make eye contact with others. Put your hand to your head to indicate you’re concentrating. Put headphones on (even if you don’t have music playing) as a way to show people you’re not interested in talking.
If someone does initiate conversation, politely but firmly let them know that you’re on a deadline and must finish your task.
⇒ When you’re at home, let your household members know you need some uninterrupted time. If you have children, ask your partner (or even a friend or neighbor) to watch the children while you enjoy uninterrupted time (and then offer the same in return). Shut the door and hang a sign on it, if necessary.
⇒ When you’re at work, shut your door whenever possible. If that’s not possible, then use the “don’t bother me” body language and other cues.
Use Squidoo.com
Squidoo is an excellent website that can help you generate traffic to your own site. You create “lenses” with Squidoo, which are not necessarily blogs, but not websites either. You could say lenses are something in between. Squidoo offers many different modules that help you add content quicker and easier than you might think possible.
Squidoo also lets you place your RSS feed from your blog on your lens. This is a hands-off way to keep your lens fresh with content since it will update itself as you update your blog. Your blog gets the benefit of the great link.
Squidoo is also very flexible about placing links to your own site, unlike HubPages or WordPress.com.
Google and other search engines also tend to love Squidoo, so you’ll find that your lenses rank highly and send link-love to your site. You can also join groups within Squidoo in order to get even more targeted people to visit your lens, and eventually your website.
Riptide Warning
Ever been to the coast and seen the warning flags cautioning surfers of the rip tides. A rip tide iis a strong channel of water flowing away from the shoreline.
If you work on a computer – and if you’re connected to the Internet while doing so – then you know how big of a distraction being online can be riptides pulling you away from you work.
It’s even worse if what you’re currently working on actually requires you to be online and surfing (like research).
You check your email. You read blogs. You join discussions on forums. You click here and there, reading whatever catches your eye. And before you know it, you’ve wasted an entire hour while accomplishing absolutely nothing.
You’ve already discovered a few ways to avoid these distractions, including:
⇒ Setting a time limit on your activities. This includes setting both a time limit on your tasks as well as your online leisure activities. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that watching endless YouTube videos is a form of research.
⇒ Setting a timer where you give 100% effort for 20 minutes at time (and you don’t allow yourself to do anything else).
Beyond that, you need to eliminate the remaining distractions as much as you can.
⇒ Shut down all unnecessary windows on your computer, including your email and extra browser windows.
Tip: Instead of closing windows, you’ll use a software to just show your active workspace, and thus hide distractive windows/applications. Check ScreenMask or DropCloth for Windows, BackDrop for Mas OS X.
⇒ Whenever possible, disconnect yourself from the Internet so that you’re not tempted to surf around aimlessly or check your email endlessly getting pull out by the riptide.
Use WordPress.com
WordPress.com is another free blogging platform that should not be confused with WordPress.org, which is a self hosted blogging application.
WordPress.com will allow you to set up a blog as a sub domain on their own domain. Just like Blogger.com, this is a great way to build links to your own website so that your rankings in the search engines increase.
You do need to be careful with WordPress.com because they’re a lot stricter about having things like affiliate links throughout your blog and being overly promotional. Still, you shouldn’t have to worry as long as you offer quality content and link to your own site in a smart way to get all the benefits of WordPress.com without being shut down.
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.
Use Blogger.com
Blogger.com is a free blogging platform that is owned by Google.
One strategy is to set up a blogger blog as your main website. It’s quick and easy.
Another strategy is to set up a Blogger blog as a method to get links to your main websites.
When you set up a blog with Blogger it will be created as a sub domain on the blogspot.com domain. (For instance http://jimmydbrown.blogspot.com/ )
That means you get all the link juice that comes from an authority site like blogger, which is a great thing for you.
To take advantage of this strategy for the search engines, you’d want to create a “mini blog” on Blogger that links back to your own site. This is a similar concept to adding articles to an article directory, though you have more control over the blog. The downside is that you don’t get the built-in article directory traffic.
The more entries you add, the more likely you are to be found by other Blogger.com users, and to rank highly in the search engines because your blog is coming from such a respected domain.
Since you’re linking back to your main website you should start to see your traffic and search engine rankings increase. Remember that every little bit helps, and that results build over time, so each of these strategies will work together to increase your overall traffic.
Set The Timer
You just discovered that setting aside a specific amount of time to do certain tasks is a good idea. Obviously, one way to make sure you actually stick to your time limit is to set a timer.
This works particularly well for open-ended tasks like “reading blogs.” However, your timer can also be used to break up bigger tasks into shorter bursts of focused, productive action.
Think about it:
Have you ever sat down for a two or three hour work session… and soon you found yourself getting distracted? You had to refill your beverage, look out the window to see what the neighbors are doing, check your email… and anything else you could think of to keep you from doing the task at hand. Using a timer can virtually force you to focus on the task at hand and keep going until you’re finished.
Now, you don’t want to set your timer for too long. If you set it for an hour, you’re just going to end up getting distracted again (since it’s hard to maintain laser-like focus for that long). In that case, the timer does nothing for you as far as saving time or boosting productivity.
Instead, you want to set it for a shorter time – perhaps 20 minutes – and then put forth 100% effort until the timer goes off. Then you take a short break (about two to five minutes), reset the timer and do it all over again. Your goal is to keep going through these cycles until you complete your task or until your allotted work time is over.
Tip: Do everything you need to do during those two to five minute breaks. That means refill your beverage, use the restroom, or just walk around or stretch. When you reset your timer for the next 20 minute period, you don’t want to be thinking about anything else except the task in front of you.
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