The black hole of time suckage.
It’s what I’ve been affectionately calling that well known
social media site (you know the one) for a few years now. And you all know why.
Open the app or page, check out everyone’s everything, and
next thing you know you’ve easily lost 30, 60, maybe even 120 minutes of your
life. (More?)
But is it really lost if you’re connecting to your friends,
family, business relations, etc.?
It depends on how you make a living
It depends on how you make a living
The majority of the world doesn’t have to worry about this
loss of time.
Many of my friends have full-time jobs where they get paid
regardless of the work flow during the day. Some days are so busy there’s no
time to check the online scene, while other days are super slow and my friends post
copious numbers of quiz results.
As a self-employed person, a business owner, I have
to have willpower to overcome the rampant temptation that can draw me into that
site.
Why?
The answer has to do with those two words I mentioned in the
title.
But before I get to that, check out this shiny thing!
But before I get to that, check out this shiny thing!
Because the internet is overloaded with more to see, read, do, learn, laugh at...
Articles about our favorite reality television “stars”. The
hundreds of emails you’ve let build up for weeks. Streaming anything. All of
these things are meant to inform and/or entertain.
And they’re fun!
And they’re so easy to access!
And they’re going to kill our business if we spend too much
time enjoying them.
All play and no work makes for a pretty small bank account
All play and no work makes for a pretty small bank account
By now you’ve likely gleaned the two words I’m referring to
right?
Time management.
Business courses can teach us how to do our marketing. They
can train us how to more effectively close a deal. They can even set us up with
a full content strategy.
But they can’t come to your house and smack you when you
want to procrastinate on actually doing
all that work. They can’t force you to do your job before you play.
From all I’ve seen, heard, read, the only person who can
help a self-employed business owner to manage their time is themselves.
Wait, where did all this crap come from?
Wait, where did all this crap come from?
This morning I opened up a couple things that required my
attention – my blog comment moderation and my email.
For the past few weeks I’ve really thrown myself into work.
Call it a resolution or whatever you like but there’s so much I need to do to
take my business to the next level. So I started working on all of it right after
the holidays.
Since then I’ve managed to rack up 228 emails in my inbox
and 27 comments requiring moderation.
This might seem like it requires immediate attention and in
former years when I was flailing around I probably would have spent my morning
reading all of that stuff, responding or otherwise convincing myself that these
items were the highest priority.
But they’re not.
Because, think about this for a second (or at least humor me
while I think it out loud). If I spent the entire day reading newsletters,
getting on social media or moderating comments, when would I get the writing
done?
I’m a writer, an author, and in order to sell my work I have to have that work to sell!
Every day I spend doing other things means I’m one day
further from ‘The End’ in any of my books.
That’s one day further from royalty checks. One day further
from a real live career as a writer.
So what’s a gal to do?
So what’s a gal to do?
The simple solution is to just ignore all that stuff of
course. Take my career back into my hands! Slay the time suckage dragon on the
mountainside!
But what happens after a week? A month? Will I still have
the same unwavering resolve to avoid all those places that I abandoned at the
beginning of the year?
The answer is yes. And here’s why:
My desire to make a living as a writer outweighs my desire to see a dog riding a skateboard.
Or whatever other time suckage distraction that draws my attention on any given day.
So what have I let go of recently in order to keep my career on track?
- Phone calls
- Social media
- Laundry, dusting, housework in general (if you know me you know this is a big deal)
- Sometimes lunch (but never dinner!)
- Reading entertaining blogs and newsletters (they’re sitting in my inbox)
- Half-finished home improvement projects
- Shipping stuff to people that I’ve had for half a year
- Grocery shopping (my favorite thing in the world is home delivery!)
- Lunches with friends
- Making my own beauty and cleaning products
It’s time to set priorities and take back my career
It’s safe to say that every single thing on that list is something important to me. But it became clear that if I do all that stuff during the week then it leaves me little if any time to work on work.
Would any employer allow an employee to slack off on working
in order to do all that stuff?
Hell no!
I can’t be any different.
Because I run a company.
Because I want that company to have another profitable year.
Because I want this year’s profits to far exceed last year’s
and there’s only one way to do that – work.
Writesy Press is my micro-press. A publishing house that
hasn’t had a book released in close to three years.
Unacceptable!
So as I wrap up the first draft of the second book in my
series today I’ll be grateful I let all that extraneous stuff fall to the side
in order to push my business to the next level.
After all, I work from home. Who needs clean laundry anyway?
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