Are You Doing Something Every Day?
It can be tough to stay motivated and on-task day in and day out, especially if you're self employed. In addition to that, if you're self employed and you work from home, you have to battle the urge to stay away from the TV, play with the kids, and so on. Luckily, there is hope. There are three tactics I use every day to stay motivated, even though I work a day job and have very little free time.
First of all, make sure you do something every day. This sounds like a "no brainer", but it's so easy to work for 5 hours on a project one day, then forget about it for a few days. If you let something go for more than 24 hours, you will have difficulty getting that inertia built back up. Personally, I work every evening when I get home from work and I work weekends -- including Sunday -- even if it's only for 5 to 10 minutes. Chances are, if you force yourself to build your business, even for five minutes, you might have fun and end up working for 30 to 60 hours.
You also need to hate your present situation. Let me explain. You should not be miserable and hate your life, but you need to have some reason to do what you're doing. Do you want a bigger house in 5 years? Do you want to go to Spain for vacation this year instead of Disney Land?
A really good and weird tactic is to set slightly unrealistic goals. If you always make $3,000 a month, tell yourself you want to make $5,000 this month. You'll work harder and might hit $4,000 or $4,500... which you will view as a failure, so you'll try harder next month. You started working for yourself because you wanted more of something... more money, more freedom, whatever. If somebody paid all your bills and did all your work for you, what would be the point of living?
Finally, you need to keep your work shippable. This is a practice I began using with software development and carried it with me to article production and info product creation. If you create your products and write your reports with the assumption that it HAS to go out tomorrow, then you'll be able to launch it if you suddenly get bored. Instead of having your project in a million pieces, have the bare minimum ready to go NOW, and add to it as needed.
Those are my three best motivational tools: doing something every day, hating your present situation, and keeping products shippable.
Filed in: Productivity
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Hey Robert,
I’m so glad Dennis Becker turned me on to you, my software development routine up to now has been long and tedious. But, from now on I’m doing small, modular projects that can be release “as is” and THEN build up to a big project from those little lego blocks. Much easier, more motivating and more profitable!
Hi Robert,
These useful pieces of information, if used properly, is a goldmine for anyone! Does that make much sense?
I think the way you put it helps people like myself, who at times think you need to spend hours upon hours at once doing the same thing, when you could split the job into 6 blocks of 30 minutes! (If ONLY someone could keep telling me that!)
Something I did spot in the post above is the fact you’ve used the word you HATE most a total of 8 times throughout, with one sentence using it 3 times! 😉
In case I forget, SplitGenie.com looks like the kind of script ANYONE wanting to Split Test would need, and have no problems getting it up and running! Very nice, even if I do say so myself!
Enjoy tomorrow, take care, and speak soon!
Thanks
Mark
P.S – Maybe you’ve just got a LOT of mail, still needing taken care of, as I sent you some and have never received a reply from you? As I said inside, I’d just be interested in how it was done! 🙂
Hey Robert,
Seems like everyone is doing something these days, whether it be creating eBooks, video courses, or software.
But how does someone create their own software?….learning a programming language can take many months, if not years.
And those that create eBooks need to know the knowledge before they can create them, right?
How does someone actively go into ‘developing’ their own products, whether it be acquiring knowledge about a subject, or actively creating it?
For example, how did you get the knowledge of programming/coding? You graduated from a university, right?
Hi Robert,
Keeping your products shipable is a good tip – I tend to be a perfectionist and end up worrying about the wrong things.
I’m having to learn to create the whole product, get it out there and then worry about the finer details (which most people never notice anyway…)
YES I AM! I have a baby and a preschooler. I feel like I’m up 24 hours a day tending to my baby right now (I suspect teething!) Yet I have 25 articles online or in review at e-zines thanks to a recent product of yours. I di plan to reply to that feedback email sometime! I use my mobile phone to jot article plans on when I am breastfeeding my bub, using the 7 minute structure ideas. My articles are getting better and shorter!
Thanks to your google alerts tip, I knew straight away that people were pinching my articles, so I can email them to *request* they do the right thing…
I’m also posting on all the blogs and forums where my keywords pop up.
So yep, my goal is to not have to go back to teaching when my boys are older – I am having a ball striving to get there.
Charndra from Part Time Diaper Free
P.S I love the videos that go with your products..shh but I don’t even read the report! I just listen to the video in the background of my day over and over when I can so that I eventually pick up all the great tips.
Hey Robert,
As always your posts Rock!
I am doing something everyday. Whether it is learning more about php for word press from your wp on Crack product which is the best word press product online right now, in my opinion.
Or
Writing sales letters using your fast food methode, 5minute copy and writing articles every day. Currently I have 50 articles left to post to ezine articles which will give me a total of 100 articles.
I write all the freakin time. I am writing 3 articles a day plus research for future articles. All this takes about two hours. Then I will either mess with my blog or research for an e-book I have in the works about product launches.
Very soon I will have a new note book so I can go to the city and post videos. Still trying to decide if it will be a pc or mac?
Keep up the good Play!
“Keep your products shippable”
I love that! Great advice.
Which gives me an idea.
Let’s say you are writing an 80 page ebook, and as you do so, you keep it shippable.
By version two or three, you probably have a perfect free report, so you could put that version aside and keep working …
So now you get two results for the effort of one: a free report and an ebook.
Robert thanks for your recent help. As you know I buy almost everything you produce as the quality is AAA+++
Again thanks for helping me with my recent question.
J.R.