A time management idea for home business

Over the last year or so, I have spent every available spare hour I could get trying to build an online business. How many hours? I don’t know but certainly hundreds. How many of those hours have been used effectively? I have absolutely no idea but judging by the results, a very low percentage. I recently came across a simple technique to address this problem. It’s Writing!

I adopted and adapted it and added my own spin on it but the basic technique is writing. You don’t need to write a novel or even a short report. For this purpose I use an A5 size, week to a view diary. For those who don’t know, the US letter size is roughly equivalent to A4. A5 is half of that, divided horizontally. In that space you have 6 divisions, one for each weekday and one for the weekend.

As you can appreciate, this is quite a small space to write in, which is good because it equates to the little time I have for business. One use of this space is for goals. On the 1st of each month, I write goals for that month and review the previous month. Every Friday I have a quick check of progress on my goals for the current month. Having this small amount of space to write them in helps me to focus in on what I need to do now, to move me towards my ultimate goal.

Setting and monitoring goals in this way is useful but it is not the real power of the system. That comes from writing a daily note on what I have done that day. Every time I sit down at my computer, I am aware that I will have to justify to myself what I am about to do. I automatically question whether it is another step in the right direction or is it just busy work?

I can write an article to submit to directories to get traffic and back links to my websites. Write more content for a site. Write a short report that can be given away to build my list. Edit a Private Label Rights ebook to create my own unique product to sell. Or, obviously, write a new hub that might be picked up by the search engines and contribute to my income. All of these things can be done once and then they are out there potentially forever, working for me 24/7.

Alternatively, I can check my email, read another ebook for the one tip that will explode my business, check my Adsense account every ten minutes. Check my email again and follow the link to a free 20 minute video, (it may be useful information!), read a 5 page sales letter, (could be just the piece of software I need!). There are any number of ways to just let the time go by.

I don’t know about the past, but since I adopted this technique, I have a very good idea how much time I spend on business and I know that each hour I spend is taking me closer to giving up my day job and having more time for life.