How do you start your day?
By Normal Joe | July 15, 2008
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What’s the first thing you do as a blogger?
As bloggers, self employed masters of our own domain, true intrepreneurs…..how you start you day is important. Why is it such an important thing? Because, it will determine what you get done for the day, what you get done for the week, and you will also be forming a pattern of action.
The mistake most marketers make
Most internet marketers, bloggers, affiliate marketers, intrepreneurs, whatever you call yourself, most make the same mistakes. Let me paint a picture for you, you wake up whenever you want to start you day…cool….a couple of things may happen next, depending on the person.
- You log into your IM clients, all 5 of them
- You open your email and start sifting through all the mail you got last night
- You catch up on your RSS feeds that are now somewhere around 271+ entries
Sound familiar to anyone? I know I’m guilty, and I’m sure if you’re honest, most of you are guilty as well.
Why email, chat, and rss feeds should not be first on your list
Many of you may know I have been on a whole organizational, efficiency, use time wisely kick lately, and for good reason. I started to realize how much time I spent doing “busy work” all in the name of “networking” or “building relationships”.
Now, don’t get me wrong, networking and relationship building is a very important part of the equation, but…like anything, it needs to be moderated.
How many times have you opened your feed reader first thing, only to find yourself still reading blogs 3 hours later! What happened to the time? Sure, you may have commented on some blogs and found some new sources of information……and that’s all fine and good. The thing is, you’ve used up a lot of your initial energy on something that can be done towards the end of your day and doesn’t require much energy to do.
Time management for friendly marketers
I know it’s hard to not do these things, especially if you’re like me, and love to meet and greet people. The thing is this, instant chat, email, and blog reading, can all be done at casual times during your day.
You want to knock out the most important tasks, those directly related to business building, first….when you have the most energy. I know some may disagree, especially bloggers…who like to blog whenever ” they get the urge”.
Believe me, I totally understand, but I also believe that most successful bloggers have some type of goal in mind. In order to reach those goals you need to take specific steps and complete specific tasks. These are the things you want to do first.
Internet success is simple
I love how things seem to fit together at the perfect time. A week or two ago, I had a guest post on Viral Marketing Strategies, dealing with time management for part-time infopreneurs.
What sparked that post, was my recent decision to implement a schedule and treat my online marketing as a part time job…until I make it full time. What this meant was devoting specific times to build my machine.
The funny thing is….after that….I finally started to watch the teaching discs from The Secret Classroom, and the first one I watched, deals EXACTLY with the things I was starting to put into place. I had this course for a few weeks, but only watched the reality show discs and not the full training dvds. The timing couldn’t have been better.
I will definitely give you a full review of each disc in the series, but let me just say this, Mark Joyner lays out a foundation that you can use in all aspects of life. And the truth of the matter is that success is simple! I know..it sounds crazy, but basically…if you cut out all the “noise” and “extra stuff” that takes time away or draws you away from reaching your goal in the most efficient and quickest way possible…..it really starts to make sense
So how do you make this work?
We are always distracted, there are more and more distractions each day. Take time to make a plan, look at it, and execute. Define those things that bring you closer, and also the things that introduce detours.
Devote a specific part of the day, or day of the week to do your networking, blog reading, and chatting. I does you no good to put “busy” on your chat client, people will message you anyway! ( sorry fellas…it’s a habit)
I suggest, you save this stuff for when you are winding down for the day…unless you have some mastermind stuff going on and really need to chat with someone about what you are working on….close it up.
I can guarantee that if you do this, even for 1 or 2 hours a day, you will see a vast improvement.
I hope you guys found this interesting….let me know what you think or what are some ways you can think of to “kill the noise” and increase your focus?
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Topics: Organization and Productivity |
What You Got To Say? Don't Be Shy. Speak Yo Mind!
4 Responses to “How do you start your day?”« IMwithJoe weekly report and goals for this week 7-14-08 | Home | Joe moves to the swamp! »
I admit that I’m guilty of everything mentioned above
But I have been trying to focus on writing my posts first thing in the morning when I have all my energy and keep the other things for later.
By the way, I hope I’m not being rude, but there is teeny a spelling error in your post: “intrepreneurs”, just thought I’d let you know
Checkout Rajaie AlKoranis last blog post..5 Good Reasons Social Media Traffic Isn’t Useless
[Threaded Reply]
July 16th, 2008 at 5:19 am
Rajaie,
I hear ya man….just keep working at it, it takes constant repetition. As far as the mispelling, I did that on purpose…I was going for internet entrepreneur lol, I wondered if people would think it was an error…but, I decided to roll with it.
I like to mix it up
By the way, never feel like you’re being rude by offering critique..I welcome it with an open mind…er….word processor lol
[Threaded Reply]
Awesome post Joe. Consider yourself stumled!!
I am not guilty of the IM as I have to go to work and they block all that. I also really caught on to something Shoemoney said a while back about getting something done in the first hour of the working day. Once you have ticked at least one piece of actual work off the list then you can go about your emails etc and into your day. I have tried this and it helps to kick start your work.
Just a thought!
Checkout theaffiliateposts last blog post..Competition Half Way Analysis
[Threaded Reply]
July 16th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Thanks AP, and I agree, it really does help. Even just getting to the point of completing one thing in your first hour will do wonders for your progress.
Checkout Normal Joes last blog post..Joe moves to the swamp!
[Threaded Reply]