Tips to avoid a Breakdown. Working the Dayjob and Still Running a Website?

Many people running a website as a hobby, would love to quit their boring dayjobs some time in the future in order to devote themselves to activities they love. I am currently on a dayjob (because I enjoy it for the time being) but I run two websites and provide content for other peoples’ sites.

In fact, I have never understood why some say that a dayjob gives you security. You can lose a job anytime but when you establish yourself as a successful webmaster you go from strength to strength. Earn more money by adding more content or even exploring new topics.

I’ve found that it takes only a little effort to use time more efficiently. The method is very simple and I am sure I am not the only one doing this. Although there are lots of pros in these tips, I must warn about serious cons – this method is not free

You will have to pay around £2.00 ($4.00) for a diary. I mean a real one, made of paper. You don’t need this small one, you’ll be looking for one that allocates a page for each day and gives time slots. The other negative factor making this method a no-no for many webmasters – you will have to fight your laziness.

Basically, what you do is, leaf to the end of your diary, where there are notes and use a page to create a weekly checklist. Each list element contains Task, Duration, Frequency. You will have to include your every online activity.

What is in an average task-list? For example:
Content for Site1 – 3 posts per week – 3x40mins (2 hours)
Content for Site2 – 3 posts per week – 3x40mins (2 hours)
Review work e-mail – 20 minutes per day
Review personal e-mail 20 minutes per day (if you’re spending more, get rid of your personal e-mail address)
Post to forum1 – 3 times a week – 3x20mins (1 hour)
Post to forum2 – 3 times a week – 3x20mins (1 hour)
Post to forum3 – 3 times a week – 3x20mins (1 hour)
Comment on fellow blogs – 3 times a week – 3x20mins (1 hour)
Ezine articles – 2 articles per week – 2x40mins (1:20)
Social networks (pick only two) – 40mins a week
Research and reading – 2 hours a week
Any other task that may benefit your business? – 1 hour a week

It is approximately 16 hours a week. Can you do that for your dream? Well, of course you can!
Be prepared to also work during the weekends.

Now that you have the checklist, leaf back to current week and write (take a pen or a pencil, do you remember what is a pen, dear geek?) down all the tasks. Usually it will be an article every evening + a promotion task (forum, blog comments, social networking, whatever) or an article every other day + several articles during the weekend. It is up to you. The trick is to plan your time every week, week by week until you become more efficient and see success.

At the start of each week move all uncompleted tasks from the previous week to current week. Each uncompleted task costs 5 pence (cents, kopeks or whatever you have in your pocket). Find a moneybox (preferably in a shape of a pig) and collect the penalty. At the start of the next year you will have enough dosh to buy a leather diary and a bottle of vodka (or any other liquid according to your taste). Penalty system moves you towards the discipline. Discipline means success!

Delete all your extra e-mail addresses. Who do you think you are, eh? You need two addresses – one for work, another one for fun. This will keep the time spent on editing e-mails to minimum.

If you are using public transportation to get from here to there, don’t just sit with a clever expression on your face, staring into the wilderness. Get some work done! You will have to read a lot to research for articles and posts you write. Use a printer to print some core material you need for researching. You can also generate the ideas or review your diary while on train.

Save time where you can. Are you driving a car? Switch to train if it is possible and you will soon replace your Proton with a car you really like but cannot afford doing your dayjob. Lord, I miss my “Clementine” (she’s a car and she’s not a Proton, though ) but I have found that travelling by train gives me that extra time to read.

You absolutely have to restrict the time you spend on forums and Digg. Even if it is a good way to promote your site, you will not get much benefit by hanging around promoting a site with no content (I mean you will have no time to write if you keep socializing too much). If you just let it flow, you will realize that you have just added more to your backlog. Time flies when you’re having fun. Especially when it comes to computer games and forums!

Unfortunately many webmasters spend lots of time refreshing (F5) their CJ, CB or Adsense accounts to check if new clicks are coming in. You gotta stop wasting your time and a rigorous discipline + a diary (don’t mix with dairy) is the only way.

Want to be your own boss? Act like one now. Where would Sir Winston Churchill be without planning? eh? When you’re on your own, there’s nobody to control or supervise you. So, can you beat your laziness?

Would you kindly share your tips of managing more tasks in less time?

 

Nice checklist. I think everyone can customize that to their needs.

 

yes , beat the laziness of myself, That is the most difficult part. That is the formula of success.

 

This, to me, is the key message. Too many people, when they say they want to be their own boss, actually mean they'd rather have no boss at all. As you say, you have to be at least as hard on yourself as a "real" boss would be if you are to succeed.

 

Real neat stuff, just 16 hours a week can achieve that much? Sometimes I feel I am working 20 hours a day and not achieving half as much.

 

Organization, focus and time management are the keys.

It's not how much your working, it's what you're accomplishing.

The faulty logic of many business owners is that you have to always be working. In fact, dummies take pride in how many hours they've worked. LOL. Telling me that you're working 80 hours a week shows me that you're lacking certain "smarts" and business skills.

If you're working 10+ hours a day and not accomplishing much, it's time to look in the mirror.

And I can tell you for a fact that it's possible to work a few hours a day and make good money. Heck, you could work a few hours a month. It's all in your ability to organize, focus and ignore stuff that sucks your time away.

 

Working isn't always about business market junction, there are other things in life as well that require working on and I was referring to that. Everything doesn't always boil down to making money and people who calculate everything in terms of money are the real dummies according to me. I work with a NGO that deals with suicidal teenagers and there are times I am on for 18 hours a day trying to save a precious life and then juggling my writing work and family around it.

I look at myself in the mirror everyday and am very satisfied with what I see. For me key skills are humanity rather than making money and putting down others all the time.

 

Did you even bother to read the original post and my reply to that post?

Please try again before attacking me.

 

Yeah I did read the original post and you weren't replying only to that post, you were replying to mine as well. The 80 hours bit certainly didn't come from Tankard's post. I wasn't attacking you by the way, I was simply replying to your post in the same tenor that you responded to mine. Time to read your own post carefully perhaps?

 

My biggest breakthrough in time "management" came not from doing more things or doing different things -- this will drive you insane -- but from stopping doing the things that didn't pay off. The key is elimination. Make tough choices and strike things from your schedule.

I like to give Pareto's Rule a big hug on a regular basis. 80% of your success (or so) comes from the best 20% of your actions. 80/20 -- if you can make yourself believe that, your mind opens to the possibility of dropping 4/5 of your schedule and still getting B-minus (that is, 80%) results. That's extreme... but it motivates me to comb over my schedule and drop, strike, delete.

(Props to Tim Ferriss.)

 

This post is fantastic. I often have problems wondering how the hell I can cope with doing it all :S. I have to get out of the laziness though, that's my only problem. However I will try this, when somethings written down as a schedule it helps me a lot more than just planning in my head.
Thanks .

 

Thanks. Here's what I left out.

Once you've got Pareto down, remind yourself about Parkinson's Law, which says that a task will expand in complexity to fill the time available. Any job will naturally get finished close to its deadline.

So you can cheat by moving deadlines up. Limit the time you have to complete tasks. Sounds dangerous -- and it can be! -- but it can keep you from overdoing a job and putting in more work and details than you need to. It forces you to focus, and like Pareto, to drop what's unnecessary.

These two ideas -- Pareto and Parkinson -- are nice reflections of each other (although they sound like a law firm). Think of Pareto to inspire you to eliminate tasks so deadlines move up... then think of Parkinson to inspire you to move deadlines up so tasks eliminate. It's a glorious feedback loop.

(Again, I got it from Tim Ferriss.)

 

I find email to be the biggest time-waster and obstacle to productivity. What really got me off the email "treadmill" was a tip from Tim Ferriss' book (4 Hour Workweek): schedule time during the day to read your email (for me it's three times a day), and DON'T get bogged down by email as soon as you get to the office. Ferriss recommends that you don't even check email when you get to the office - get a chunk of work done first.

 

His post was entirely relevant to the OP, which is all about being your own boss - so yes, it's about the money. It's great that you're happy and have other motivational factors going for you, but that's not in the context of the discussion as the OP laid it out.

Also, 80-hours is pretty generic, so I'm not sure why you were assuming he was referring to you directly. You didn't mention 80 hours per week - what you mentioned would have amounted to 100 hours per week assuming a 5-day work week. And you didn't say you actually work 20 hours a day; only that you "feel" you're working 20 hours a day - so he'd have absolutely no reason to logically be referring to you in that example. Remember, the OP is talking about maximizing your time - In line with that, Jason was pointing out that working more isn't always a good thing - and he's right.

Back on point, I've done the 80-hour per week game. I still often do - the difference is that now only 10-20 hrs per week are actually billable to clients, and all of that "extra time" is time I'm able to invest into projects of my own or future income sources. I earn much more now for those far fewer billable hours, feel enormously less stressed, have other income sources either out there or coming out soon, and frankly I love my work even more. And like both Jason and the OP point out, it's about organization, discipline, and knowing how to allocate your time - it's really amazing what we can get done once we work on improving our productivity a bit.

 

That's correct Jenn. Sigh.

Not only is 80 hours a week perhaps one of the most common sayings (100 hours a week a close second), but a business owner / writer I provide consulting to "works" about 80 hours a week and this week I'm working with her to improve her business. So that's why I brought up the 80 hours.

Evidently, posting here is not part of good time management for me.

 

I agree. For me, working on the internet must be like sitting a 40 oz in front of a recovering alcoholic. Ok, maybe not that bad. But, you get the point.

I have to resist the urge to visit Perez Hilton or else I'd be "working" 80 hours a week.

 

If you want to get more done, give yourself less time to do it. I have about three hours to work between the boy's bedtime and mine. If I want any time to myself before I start the nightly wake-up calls, I'd better get moving and stay that way. Give yourself time to waste and you will certainly waste it.

I've also found that once you reach a comfortable place, you don't always have to make more money. Sure, you should always be marketing to be sure your client base is dependable, but I don't take every job that comes my way. I'm fortunate to have reached a place where the writing pays the bills and the remaining hours of my days (all two of them) are worth more than my hourly rate. So I don't work during those hours. They are mine.

If you want to avoid burn-out, find balance in all areas of your life and enjoy what you do during the hours you work.

Rebecca

 

I would like to follow up on something that internet author mentioned and that is finding a good time to commit to your work time. Find a chunk of time during your day when you won't be distracted, whether it's at night, the morning or during the day, and then set out to accomplish your work goals. If you can maintain that schedule for six weeks then you have formed a habit and it should stick. I find it works great for me and my lifestyle.

 

If you want to go one step further, you can divide your duties into roles(parent, entrepreneur, spouse, etc) and then organize your tasks according to each role. This will help you to not forget about the other important aspects in your life; not everything is work and money.

Taken from the "7th Habits..." book.

 

I totally agree with:

I couldn't have said it any better myself.