How do you stay on task? One of our biggest challenges in this day and age is to stay focused. There are so many distractions, especially when you work for yourself on the computer. The email notifications pop up, friends send instant messages, the phone rings, the kids come home from school or the cat is hungry.

Many successful Internet entrepreneurs say we need to start limiting the distractions and focus on finishing a particular task, instead of trying to multi-task. For the longest time we were told multitasking is key — but not any more. And research supports it.

Tim Ferris, who wrote The 4-hour Work Week, says that our urge to constantly check email is an addiction. He also says that multitasking lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana it’s actually been proven in a scientific study! Pretty scary!
The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

I knew I needed to change from a buzzing bee to a focused, sharp internet entrepreneur. During my work day I never ever reached the end of my to-do list. Every day I was left with a sense of failure, because I didn’t get enough accomplished. When I spoke to other entrepreneurs, this seems to be a very common problem.

Obviously, there are several issues to look at. The first one is probably the list. What’s on the to-do list — and how important are those things? Many times I cram everything into my list, hoping that a task on the list will magically be finished, preferably by someone else or by itself. Wishful thinking, indeed.
Another question is how do we measure success in our work? We’ll return to this discussion later.

I started by paying more attention to my actual work habits. When I was working on a task, I constantly stopped to check email, answer the phone, or somehow managed to get off task. Especially when it is a task I hated doing such as bookkeeping. I’d gladly get up from my desk to feed a hungry cat, and trust me, in our house we have three, so there is always a hungry cat to feed. And while I was in the kitchen, I needed to unload the dishwasher or mop the floor. This was definitely something I can improve.

I also watched one of Eben Pagan’s videos where he talked about time management and how to divide the work day in segments and how to limit distractions. According to Eben, you should work in two-hour blocks throughout the day. It is a focused burst of work during two hours when you turn off your email notifier, cell phone and any other distraction and just concentrate on the task at hand. Sounds easy, but it does require focused attention.

This idea follows the Simpleology formula pretty well. Simpleology is Mark Joyner’s system for how to keep yourself moving towards your goals. You set your long-term and short- term goals, and plan your day according to those. You can also choose to use a timer to keep yourself on task. You work for 50 minutes and then take a five minute break. Simpleology is an online based tool and Simpleology 101 is free. So check it out for yourself if you’re interested at  www.simpleology.com

I don’t remember where I read about changing your mindset. It was a point that really hit home with me. You need to start thinking as a business owner and entrepreneur instead of a writer, programmer, graphic designer — or whatever your other job was. As an employee you can think as a graphic designer and concentrate on graphic design, but when you start your own business, you have to change how you think. No longer can you concentrate on just design; instead you need to wear all the other hats for your business as well. Sometimes those hats are more important than the old one you’re really comfortable wearing. Without sales or clients, there’s never any business going on. You are the one who is responsible for bringing in the clients to your business. For a lot of entrepreneurs this is a big change.

Eben Pagan says that a lot of small business owners have a hard time focusing and knowing what needs to get done. We prefer to wear our comfortable old hat — the one that fits well and we look so good in. So the video producer spends all his or her time working on video production, and not enough time on marketing and sales for example.

I know that this was true for my business. I love working on the content creation part — writing, graphic design, video production and I don’t work as much on the other parts of my business.

Eben suggests that we spend;
Customers – 40 % of our time. Getting new customers and affiliates, generate traffic getting, build relationships

Conversion – 20% of our time. All activities after the visitors come to your website

Content – 10% of our time. Writing articles, press releases, blog posts, creating videos, products

Management – 30% of time. Manage your time, people and business.

I spent more then 50% of the day in content creation and that is not the way to increase sales or expand your business. All this made me realize that it was time for me to change my mindset and start thinking as a business owner and not a content producer.

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According to www.resolutionsnewyear.com the most popular New Year’s Resolutions are:

1. Spend more time with family and friends
2. Become fit
3. Cut down the extra fat
4. Quit Smoking
5. Quit Alcohol
6. Get out of debt
7. Learn something new
8. Become more organized
9. Help others
10. Enjoy life more

I did quit smoking over 10 years ago, so I have already taken care of that one. It was difficult, but satisfying in a strange way. Once you’ve been through that, you know you should be able to change anything about yourself. I’d say that the first three days were really difficult, the first three weeks rather annoying. My brain wouldn’t think about much else but cigarettes, but after three weeks, things changed almost overnight. Suddenly I noticed that I wasn’t thinking about it anymore and the thoughts slowly disappeared over time. In the end, it was well worth all the trouble, and now I view it as one of my greatest accomplishments.

As small business owners, I think most of us spend too much time working, thinking or even worrying about work. The website www.resolutionsnewyear.com says that 50% of Americans want to spend more time with family and friends, and entrepreneurs are no different.

I’m definitely going to make an effort to divide my time between work and family better in 2009. Someone suggested to make special family days; such as pizza night on Fridays. In our family we have also made a plan to “take back weekends” for family time in 2009. This past year a lot of work has been forced in on weekends for different reasons, and this is something we want to change.

Loosing weight or working on getting in shape, is another common one. If we can work on making our bodies stronger, we’ll accomplish more all around.

Steve Pavlina often uses the 30-days of change to implement a new routine. As you know, it is said that it takes 30 days to change and make something into a routine. So if you want to start eating healthy for example, make a commitment to stick to it for 30 days straight. All you have to do is to go through your month, and by the end of the month it should almost be a habit for you.

Most of the time we put too much pressure on ourselves to make a drastic change overnight, and when we slip, we give up the whole idea. I think by committing to a 30-day change, you don’t have to commit to a lifetime change, just a month trial period. So you can try eating vegetarian for 30 days and see if it works for you. No strings attached.
It’s a great way to get into healthier habits.

Many of us struggle with debt, often credit card debt. This time of year it’s could be a good idea to make a plan for how to get out of debt. Can you spend less and use the money to start to pay down your debt? Everything has to happen in small steps, there is no easy way to get out of debt, but the longer we wait to make a plan and start taking action, the longer it will take.

I found it interesting that Learn Something New came up as number 7 on the list. Trying something new can be exciting, and who said it had to be work-related? You could learn how to knit or crochet, or take cooking classes.
Entrepreneurs are life-long learners. Most of us can always learn more about marketing techniques, how to present, how to analyze a budget, how to interview job applicants and much more.

“Becoming more organized is one of those things that I keep repeating every year about this time. I think I’m hoping for a magic solution, one that doesn’t involve any significant change or effort from my part.
This year I’m going to organize my workday differently. I will try to clean off my desk at the end of the day, and make a plan for the whole week on Mondays. I’ll also try to limit how many times a day I check my inbox and do that later in the day. This is going to be difficult for me, because I like checking email in the morning and respond. For me, it would be better to get my most important tasks out of the way first thing.
I have been following the Simpleology system to keep me on track this year. It’s free and can help you see what you should focus on during your day.

Help others and Enjoy life more. I will work on finding good tips to post on do your own marketing to help other small business owners save money by doing more of their own marketing.
What are you planning on doing in 2009 to enjoy life more?

Making goals, plans and objectives are only the first step, and probably the easiest one. The hard part is sticking to the plan and implementing changes and strategies throughout the year. This might be why so many people keep making the same old New Year’s resolution year after year. It’s easy to wish for something, it’s much more difficult to make it happen.

My suggestion is to keep your goals and your plan realistic. It is better to make goals and be successful in reaching them, instead of giving up after two months. If you have had a problem in the past, maybe the 30-day approach could work for you.

The other reason we don’t reach our goals, is that we make a plan and we don’t check our progress. In order to know your exact progress, your plan needs to be clearly defined in steps or phases “ otherwise you’ll only know when you have reached the finish line. I believe this is one of the hardest things to achieve when you’re making a strategic plan. But if you can outline a step-by-step path for your business, you can also track your progress and adjust as you go along.

For many of us, 2008 wasn’t the best year, so it’s more important than ever to analyze what worked and what needs to change in order for 2009 to become a profitable year.
And while you’re working on your plans, I hope you’ll get to spend some quality time with family and friends to enjoy the holidays!

Turn on the news and you’ll hear about it all day.

But hidden in all of the ‘ doom and gloom ‘ is something that few people are talking about. Even though we’re in the middle of a recession, a lot of savvy eBiz owners have not only survived this economic downturn, they thrived in it.

How did they do it?

Well, that’s exactly what you’re going to find in a series of FREE videos, audio interviews and special reports in the upcoming weeks.

A few weeks ago, a company that I have a lot of respect for, Worldwide Brands, sent out a survey to their customer list and asked what their main concerns were.

Almost 75% of them said they were worried about how the recession will affect their business.

So, Worldwide Brands went to work and created videos, audios, and tutorials to show their
customers what they needed to do to grow their online business in troubled times.

Initially, this content was only available to their customers, but for the next few days you can get access to it for free.

You’ll get case studies, free tutorials, audio interviews, and free videos showing you exactly what you need to do to take your online business to the next level no matter what the economy looks like.

Click here to watch the first video and sign up for their in-depth video series.

Trust me when I say this, they can easily charge a lot of money for this information.
Worldwide Brands is the world’s largest provider of wholesalers and drop ship companies pre-qualified to work with small business owners.

They know what they’re talking about and this is insider information you can’t get anywhere else.

So sign up to get all of this valuable content for free, before it’s gone:

Thanks and I’ll talk to you soon.

Susanne
DoYourOwnMarketing.com

P.S. – If you have more questions and comments after you watch the videos, you can drop them
a line on the blog. They’ll be watching the blog to answer questions and get more ideas
for upcoming videos. Click here to check it out

There are two ways to send and receive email. You can use an email program installed on your computer, like Outlook or Eudora, or you can use an online web mail account such as gmail, yahoo or hotmail.

Many people have lots of websites and lots of email addresses to keep up with. For example, you might use one email address for your private email, and another email address for your business.

We prefer using gmail. It’s easy, and you can always get to your email even when you’re traveling. I also like the fact that I can set up gmail to automatically label my email or toss it directly into folders for me. It makes it easy if you can color-code or label incoming mail; sort it in folders and so on.

Lately, I’ve started to use gmail as my GTD organizer. I label things according to actions needed, such as next-action, waiting, to do etcetera. It works well for me.

The rules function in gmail  is just awesome. Some of my customer service requests I automatically forward to our customer service representative for example. My son’s soccer schedule automatically forwards to him.

I used outlook for a very long time, and it has some great functions with mail merge and group emails and so on. But I have to say, that gmail can do most things just as well. I create groups frequently. For example, I have created a group for soccer parents in our car pool group. Whenever I need to send out a schedule change or something, I just send a quick email to the group instead.

Another big reason I started using gmail was the problem we had with spam. When I used outlook I constantly had to spend time fighting the virus problems and sort a lot of spam. The problem with getting viruses on my computer completely disappeared when we started with gmail. Also, the spam filter is excellent. I hardly see any spam anymore.

You can take the tour and find out if this is a solution for you by clicking here.