Yesterday was one of the days that I consider to be a great representation of exactly why I am not making lots of money as an affiliate. I did all the things that hold me back and didn’t do the work that I needed to. For those that struggle with procrastination and wasting time this will be a good read.
So I woke up full of excitement at about midday. I woke up late because I was writing a post on here until about 5am that morning. When I surfaced I sat down on the the computer to check the forums/stats and have a coffee etc. By this time it was about 1pm and was hungry so I decided to go the the fish n chip shop.
After paying $17.50 for a seafood basket and a can of coke I was back and ready to work. I actually wrote down that it was 1.45 pm. At this time I got involved in a conversation on MSN with my friend about a new plugin. This guy is awesome for thinking outside of the box and coming up with great custom themes. If you ever need anything custom built his name is Kevin and he makes super gambling website designs.
I was also stuffing around doing other things at this time and it wasn’t until 4pm that I finally made a post on here. When that was done I stuffed around with this theme and general killed time and before I knew it, it was dinner time. I had probably had about 3 coffees by this point because I trick myself into thinking that coffee will give me a burst of focus and I will begin working.
So it’s after dinner and around 7pm and I’m about to begin cranking out content because I am falling behind. But again, this does not happen. My Brother calls me and we get talking for about an hour. After finally getting off the phone it is now 8pm and I’m getting pissed that I have wasted all this time.
So I open up the word document and then a girl I know signs into MSN. This kills another hour or so. I haven’t got the exact times right but I was also wasting a heap of time looking at stats, domains and tweaking this theme. After I finished doing all this stuffing around it was 10pm.
I finally focused because the pressure was on and got the first article written. I decided to have a snack and another coffee and get back into it. I once again got caught up and it was now about 2.30 am and was considering pulling an all nighter. I decided that it would be best that i go to bed and start fresh the next day because my brain was scatttered. When I drink coffee I have massive cups with a lot of coffee and sugar in it. Overall I probably had 6 coffees trying to focus.
So as you can imagine I was pretty pissed I didn’t get the work done that i wanted to. It is especially annoying because I am writing for someone else. I have set some goals for today and put some things in place that will help me out.
How to Focus as an Affiliate
I actually have a plan of making a separate page for the things that help to focus when working as an affiliate. For now I will just go through what I am going to do today.
1. The first thing I have done is turn off MSN. I only have SKYPE running and that is on busy. I only found out yesterday that when you have it on busy you don’t get distracted when you get a message. It puts a tiny little number on the icon. With MSN the windows flash a bright orange and I can’t NOT click them.
2. I am going to go to the gym today. I have been meaning to do this for afair while now. If I don’t exercise through the day I get stale and end up sitting and staring at the screen. If I go to the gym it will re-energise me.
3. I am going to limit myself to 2 coffees today. That might not seem like a tough thing to do but recently I have been drinking so many it isn’t funny. This will stop my brain scattering and leave me to my rational thoughts.
4. I am going to write 10 pieces of content today. I know Mark from SNG Planet does it on a regular basis without too much trouble so I don’t see why I can’t. I need to start getting into the routine of pumping out lots of work like this.
5. No excuses. No matter what I am going to try to the best of my abilities to ge these goals done for the day.
That about wraps up my story from yesterday and how I am working on becoming more efficient. It might seem silly to some but these small steps will help me out a lot in the long run. It is now 1pm so my plan it to write the first three articles and then go to the gym. After that i will write another and it will probably be about dinner time.
If anyone else has any suggestions on what they do to stay focused each day I would love to hear it.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I have begun getting up earlier. For some reason it seems like there are more distractions in the evening.
If you haven’t already read it, I would recommend Getting Things Done by Davie Allen. Most of the things I do to keep myself on track is based on ideas from that book.
I also enjoy having a (shared) office I go to. It helps me to get up in the morning, and I find it easier to be productive when I’m surrounded by people who work.
P.S. Thanks for naming the feed.
Lol, if I didn’t know we are living this far from each other, I would think you are my twin
My yesterday was almost the same as yours – woke up with a feeling that I will save the world and get done loads of things and what happened? I started to cook, watch some TV, hanging around on forums and all these time-killer activities instead of doing what I wanted to do. And of course I got VERY frustrated in the evening that I wasted 1 day of my life in an unproductive manner, so instead of stopping my slacking I had a bubble bath LOL. And yes, for today I plan to start with my regular exercise session that I neglected this week.
Some time ago I found an interesting article about distractions : http://thinkvitamin.com/features/how-to-shut-up-and-get-to-work/
Basically the article says if you get even 1 minute distraction when you are in the “zone” (when you can work the most efficient – like a REM zone when you sleep), you will suffer for more 30 minutes until you can get back to your “zone” again.
That’s why switching off IM programs, forums, sometimes maybe the music, switching your phone to silent will make wonders. You won’t get distracted. Hope this helps
Thanks for the link Sipka.
Today has gone fairly well so far – I wrote the blog post and 3 strategy articles. I got to the gym and had dinner. The house has now gone quiet so it is time for the 2nd pahse. It is 9pm so I think I should be able to get the rest of the work done. Once I get these first few days over with I can begin to mkae some more resource oritented posts.
Looking forward to hearing how you progressed with things today.
Nick
Hey Jakob,
Yeah man I will have to take a look at that book. At the moment I have The 1 Minute Millionaire and Think and Grow Rich to fnish off. They are great books but when I lose motivation I stop doing everything completely. After I get done with those I will make a post about what I think and will order the one you recommended.
Cheer mate.
One of the things that has helped me a ton is turning off the MSN notifications when a new person signs on. Instead of the usual popup and annoying sound it makes, it does nothing now… really helps a lot for me because I like having MSN on in case someone needs to contact me.
Yeah I have those turned off as well and don’t have my speakers on. I still find Skype much better though. I will sign into MSN from time to time but not have it running all day.
Wow, this article was really fun to read.
I’m struggling with the same problem: Just by drinking coffee, using MSN and checking new posts in affiliate marketing forums, my sites will never be up and running.
Good luck, I’ll follow this blog.