This is a guest post by Mike Wittmeyer. He is the webmaster of Online Poker Sites and has a wealth of experience in working as an affiliate. Thanks Mike for your contribution.
One of my favorite parts about being an affiliate is that I am truly my own boss. No one tells me when to wake up, when to come to work, or when I can leave work. If I want to take a day, a week, or even a month off, I don’t have to ask for vacation time or file any paper work – I just don’t show up.
Although this sounds amazing (and it definitely is fun), the total lack of structure can make it harder to actually get things done. If I wake up and it looks cold outside, I would much rather sleep for another hour or two than get dressed and trudge through the snow to my office. Of if I’m about to start a big project and a friend calls to go golfing, it is much more fun to go shoot a round (even if I do shoot 100+).
Although I’m certainly not the most productive affiliate out there, I like to think that I’ve sort of figured out how to work for myself and still work. This article will explain a few ideas for doing just that:
Tip #1 – Have Some Sort of Schedule
I know some affiliates are on a strict 9-5-ish schedule, but I don’t think you have to be that rigid to be productive. However, you should have some sort of schedule in place so you at least feel accountable to do a little work every day.
If you always work sporadically and scattered hours, it is too easy to say “eh I’m tired right now, I’ll get to this later tonight” which quickly becomes “eh I’m still tired, it can wait until tomorrow”.
I don’t follow a rigid “schedule” per say, but I try to get in two work sessions per day. Usually one in the morning right when I wake up for three to four hours, then another one after lunch for another three to four hours. I really like getting one session in immediately when I wake up, because if something comes up later I still got some work done instead of laying around all morning.
Now I might wake up at 10 A.M. or 3 P.M., but either way I try to get my two sessions in with a lunch break in the middle.
No matter what time of day you prefer to work, I’d recommend instituting some continuity so you feel obligated to get things done every single day. BTW if you take weekends off that’s your choice – I work pretty much every day unless I’m hungover or out of town.
Tip #2 – Endless AND Daily To-Do Lists
I just posted about this on my blog, but I’ll go into a little more depth now. Everyone and their Mother use to-do lists, but I feel like a lot of people aren’t doing it right. If you have a Word document with 20+ tasks on it, and come in to work and try to knock off a couple of those tasks, I think you can improve your method.
I prefer having two To-Do lists: one Word document that is an “endless” list which I continually add to as things pop up in my head, and one that is a “daily” list which is usually written on a piece of paper.
The endless list is pages long and has dozens if not hundreds of tasks. There is certainly a lot of work to be done on that list, but I know that if I sat down at my computer and read over that to-do list I would feel overwhelmed and probably do nothing.
Instead, the first thing I do in the morning is to open up the endless list and choose five or so tasks that I think I can get done TODAY. I write those tasks on a piece of paper, and decide that those five items are what I’m going to knock off today.
By doing this, I make myself accountable to finish everything on that smaller list. If I just had the big list, I might do two or three things and think I had a good day. However, by writing on the smaller list exactly what I think I can accomplish in one day, I force myself to finish it all or feel guilty.
Tip #3 – Start with the Easy Stuff
This isn’t really about being your own boss, per say, but it is a good tip for general productivity. Once you have your daily to-do list ready to go, I recommend starting with the easiest task. Although some people might think you should do the hardest stuff first, so your day gets easier as it goes on, I don’t think that’s right.
It’s hard to go from sitting in a chair to working at 100% output, so I like to “warm up” with the easiest stuff. For example, if one of the items on your list were to make a call or send an email to someone important, I’d get started with that. After you finish that, you can cross it off and move onto writing a page of content or swapping a link. And from there, you can ramp up to coding or design or whatever the hardest part of your day is going to be.
Hopefully you guys got something out of this article – if not, hit me up and tell me to stop doing guest posts 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Always enjoy your productivity posts Mike – will (slightly) disagree on #3 though – I always start with the stuff which has the most potential to unlock / make possible a task for someone else which moves a project along… whether easy or hard for me… being a pedant here really though as these ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
To do lists work for me well, a ‘master’ with a weekly goals and then daily tasks.
Mark
Thanks Mark. I definitely agree that the two tendencies aren’t mutually exclusive, and I also like to get things done if it allows someone else to start working. In that case I almost feel like the person is “waiting” on me, so I have even more motivation to get the task wrapped up.
Enjoyed the blog post Mike, and Nick I like how this blog is more active now (there was a time I was checking and it was like 2 months without a post)… keep it up.