To folks who work traditional jobs, having an online business sounds amazingly fun, liberating and suspiciously like an extended vacation.
Part of this is spot on–you really can’t beat working your own hours from the comfort of your own home and collaborating with colleagues across the globe.
It’s a dream job, but there is a challenging flip side– most of us online biz owners find that we’re perpetually working, constantly online, and eternally trying to sheild ourselves from the virtual tennis balls that are constantly being hurled at our heads in the form of email, IMs, phone calls, RSS feeds and a never-ending source of internet stimuli.
When your dream business starts taking over your entire life, something’s gotta give and steps have to be taken to get your life and your time back under control.
Here are 5 tried and trusted ways to get your online workday back on track:
1. Restrict your work hours to increase efficiency. In the past you may have had all day at your disposal to work when you chose, which sounds ideal, but it’s really just a situation that helps folks procrastinate and get side-tracked.
My recommendation is to severely limit your workday hours to something between 4 to 8 hours a day.
Now, I can hear what you’re thinking, “But if I can barely get everything I need to get done in 12 hours, then how the heck am I supposed to finish everything in 8 or fewer hours?!”
I know, that sounds nutty, but trust me, there is method to the madness.
Productivity guru Steve Pavlina says,
“Once your brain realizes that working time is scarce, you suddenly become a lot more efficient because you have to be. When you have tight time constraints, you will usually find a way to get your work done. But when you have all the time in the world, it’s too easy to be inefficient.
I’m telling you, this works. About 6 months ago I took Steve’s advice and restricted my workday to 4 hours a day. Yep, a measly 4 hours a day.
Remarkably, I was able to finish in half the time work that once took me 8 or more hours to complete.
After I got my efficiency built up, I was able to add on more tasks and increase the length of my workday. My workday is now an optimally efficient 6 hours long (you know, for the most part ;-)), and that includes client work, blog writing and admin, online socializing and internet surfing.
The hours can vary from day to day depending on what’s going on in your life, but the point is to be mindful of having some sort of limitations on your workday.
2. Create a map for your day. Let’s see a show of hands–how many of you hop online to get some work done, then before you know it hours have passed, and you still haven’t accomplished what you originally set out to do?
I know, me too. It’s a constant struggle to stay on task online because there are so many avenues of stimuli to pursue. Unlike reading a book or going to a movie, exploring the internet is an activity that has no end.
It’s like trying to take a quick stroll through the Amazon jungle. If you saunter in there without a map, you’re not coming out any time soon!
In order to resist the temptation to wander aimlessly, all you need to do is a little prep work. Write down a detailed list of what you need to accomplish for the day in order of priority before turning on the computer.
At the top of my own list goes client work, then work on my own business, then blogging writing time, blog admin, and finally participating in various online communities. Within each of these areas, I break it down to actionable tasks, such as:
- Client A–check email, write press release, contact so-and-so about possible JV…
- Client B–check email, do research on new book idea, renew domain names…
You get the idea–all of the things on the list are prioritized action-oriented tasks.
This is my map for the day. If I stick to it I can hammer out the tasks much more quickly than if I was to hop online and wander without direction.
3. Schedule times to check email. Now this is a biggie–email is the Bermuda Triangle of productivity and the major time sucker-upper for most folks.
One of the ways I’ve gotten my email under control is to only check it at certain times and not give the siren’s song of the incoming mail chime the chance to lure me away from what I’m doing all day long.
Of course the needs of your work determine how often you do your checking, but the goal is to check email as many times as you need to and as few times as you can get away with. I check mine twice a day, once at the beginning of my day and once near the end. At all other times my email program is closed and off my mind.
The object is to get yourself out of the constantly checking, checking, checking mode and to start treating your email like what it is: an information input tool, just the same as your voicemail, your inbox on your desk or your mailbox in front of your house.
Just as you wouldn’t stand out in front of your house all day long waiting for letters and packages to arrive, it doesn’t make sense to stake yourself out in your inbox all day.
4. Relax and don’t try to force yourself to work harder. When I first started overhauling the structure of my workday, I made the mistake of trying to cram 8 hours of work into a 4 hour time period, with disappointing results.
Learn from my mistake–trying to work harder doesn’t make you more efficient; it just makes you frantic, frazzled and frustrated.
There is some psychological strategy involved in this workday plan–you need to be relaxed and focused.
David Allen calls this having a “mind like water”, athletes call it being “in the zone”. Call it whatever you like–just know that if you put too much pressure on yourself to get a certain amount of work done in a restricted amount of time, then you’ll just drive yourself crazy.
The trick is to focus on relaxing rather than on gutting it out.
5. Cut yourself some slack. For those of us who are used to being online pretty much all the time, there can be withdrawl symptoms associated from cutting back on internet time.
When we set boundaries on our online workday, surprisingly the hard part is not working in a focused manner for 4 hours (or however many hours you’re going for).
- The hard part is stopping working when the workday time is up.
- The hard part is turning off the computer and resisting the temptation to turn it back on.
- The hard part is resisting the urge to check email compulsively throughout the day and night.
- The hard part is thinking mindfully about how you spend your time and not simply doing things out of habit.
The hardest part of all is stopping your mind from thinking about work after you turn off the computer.
Changing ingrained habits is tough work, so if you find yourself slipping up from time to time, don’t sweat it.
What we’re focusing on here is progress, not perfection. The overall goal is to start to make some healthy changes in how we approach our online work.
If you decide to incorporate some of these elements into your own online workday overhaul, I’d love to hear your take on things. Also, if you have any special tricks of your own, by all means, please share.
Originally posted on March 13, 2007 @ 4:35 am
Nice post. I have to admit any time I’ve worked at home the work time has expanded to fill the time available. And there are a lot of hours available in a day!
Great tricks. Not that I have not read some of them before, but it is nice to be reminded. The “work expands to fill the time” is true both as employee and working on your own. I have noticed how inefficient it can get when you have an open day with no appointments or tasks that must be done on that day. Besides checking my mail every ten minutes I catch myself doing the same with RSS-feeds… Hm… Should really turn off my computer now and go for a long walk. :-)
When I first started at my current job, they set up everyone’s computer to auto-check for new e-mails every 2 minutes. It took me a while to realize that (as you mention above) this is one of the biggest drains on productivity. It’s incredibly distracting – working on task X for 10 minutes; pausing to answer 2 new e-mails; working on task X for another 8 minutes; pausing to answer 3 more e-mails; repeat. I switched it to check every hour and I find that I get much more done. Ideally I think it should be every 2-3 hours, but it’s a compromise.
Ditto for voicemail. I set my do-not-disturb for much of the day and then check my voicemails and return calls once/twice per day at most.
It’s all about segmenting out blocks of uninterrupted time to focus on the task at hand. I’ll repeat what several wise productivity gurus have said: “Multitasking is a myth.”
This is great advice. I have been helped by attacking a task for 45 minutes and then taking a break. I set a timer on my cell phone to tell me when my 45 minutes is up. Then I take a short break or chase rabbits.
It is amazing how much you can do when you blitz for a short time.
Hey guys,
Thanks so much for chiming in! Great bonus tips!
Oh, yeah, having the limited workday is the key.
Have you ever taken a half-day from work as you were starting a vacation and then been amazed at all the stuff you were able to get done in that 1/2 day? To me, it always seems like I’m super productive whenever I take a half day.
And I completely agree–multi-tasking is a myth! We are humans, not computers with parallel processors. Our minds can only handle so much incoming info!
Oh, and the time boxing is a great tip, Jeff. Yes, it helps us focus when we know we get to take a break in a certain amount of time.
The productivity stuff is probably 10% organizational and 90% psychological.
Thanks for stopping by!
Cheers,
Sharon
Timely (no pun intended) reminders, Sharon. I’m looking to make some expansions in my business life (well, ok, to make some business in my business life); these tips should make things go a little smoother.
Very helpful tips. I will try following your advice on emails right away, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to cut my work hours to just 4 hours a day. Besides usual distractions that you mention here, the biggest distraction I have is my 2 year old daughter. I always need to stop for feeding her, dressing, changing, playing, going for walks, etc. Any tips on how to deal with kids at home would be appreciated.
Another tip: instead of having a to-do list of tasks (which invites choosing the easiest ones first), write the most important task on sticky note and stick that to the computer. When that one is done, write the next one on a note and do it again, and so on down the list from most important to least important.
That is a really useful post, … it’s weird, I already knew everything you said buy I havn’t been doing it. That ‘in the zone thing’ is a good point, latly with the arrival of my new site it has been a struggle to get everything done, perhaps I should relax a bit more.
I don’t suppose you would care fora link exchange?
[email protected]
how to say,
i m webdesigner everyday i stay infront of pc around 11Hours everyday, sometime i feel like i lost something if i not touch my pc for 1 day and my hand like always wanna to type something on keyboard. do you thing i too addict to play pc to browse the internet. maybe i need to take some vacation where the place dont have any internet connection .
p/s; i will try to apply ur techique to relax
@Inspirationbit–oh man, my heart goes out to you trying to juggle working at home with taking care of a baby. The closest thing I have to that is my puppy, and when she gets too wild and interruptive, I just put her in her crate and she immediately goes to sleep. I know that would be totally unappropriate for a child tho!
Maybe one thing you could do (which is what David Allen, creator of the productivity system “Getting Things Done” suggests) would be to make the interruptions of the baby acceptable and just a natural part of your day. Instead of thinking of them as interruptions, focus on the perk that you have a living, breathing built in feature in your workday that will force you take breaks throughout the day. The main benefit of these breaks is that you get to spend time bonding with your daughter :) . So, don’t fight it. I’ll do some research and see if I can come up with any more tips for work at home parents.
@Jurgen, thanks so much for the bonus tip! I know lots of folks love post-it notes, but I tend to go haywire with them and end up with post-its all over the computer, which sort of stresses me out. If you’re a more disciplined person than I am with the sticky notes ;), I can see how your method is very helpful.
@Matt608–yeah, it’s like we all know what to do, it’s just the hard part is actually doing the stuff! One thing that seems to work without fail is the relaxing part. Even if you’ve got a ton of work and are launching a new site, you need time to re-charge your brain so you can work in a focused manner. I’ve noticed that when I take time away from work that I actually look forward working. If we’re working all the time, then we don’t really get the chance to get excited about going to work.
@skyjuice–yes, for those of us who work online all day long, it can be kind of addictive! I have one friend with an internet business who told me that when he turns off his computer, he feels like his business disappears. We have a whole, full, busy life just online, that it’s hard to tear away from it. Plus there’s the fun of surfing the net, which is hard to resist. Yeah, definitely, if you went someplace where there was no internet and left your computer at home, you’d very quickly find other fun, interesting things to do. Definitely worth a shot!
Thanks for your reply, Sharon.
I’m not fighting it, I realize how lucky I am to have my daughter with me. I was just pointing out that it’s hard to have a strict work schedule for moms working from home with a baby. The distractions can last anywhere from a minute for a quick hug to an hour for feeding and changing.
You’re spot on on the mind becoming more efficient when restricted to less hours.
I find myself at full speed ahead in the last 2 hours of the work day.
Mephala–Oh yeah, we crank it into high gear when we know we’re running out of time! Same thing for the last day before a vacation–it’s amazing what we can get done when there’s a time limit!
I’ve heard that the average office worker only works productively for 1.5 hours out of an 8 hour day. I think web workers (hopefully!) do much better than that. For us, there really is a vested interest in increasing our productivity, because how we manage our time is linked to how much money we can make.