From Super Affiliate… to Super Lazy!
Over the past several months, I’ve found myself working on new projects and focusing my efforts elsewhere… and slightly moving away from what I know makes the most money and what I should be working on. It’s not completely a matter of being lazy… it’s more about where I would much rather spend my time, and lately, that’s been playing 2-4 hours of basketball several days a week. While it’s great to get out and occasionally set yourself apart from your business, you need to keep things in perspective, and do what’s necessary.
My average day is waking up sometime between 8am and 10am, then working on the computer till around 3pm. Around 3-4pm I usually head over to the gym and run basketball til around 6:30pm. If I don’t hit the gym up that day, then I will probably be working online til around 6… so the week evens out a bit.
It really is quite amazing how much time you can spend online, and how little work you can get done. Between keeping an eye on Twitter, chatting with others on AIM, looking at stats reports and going over new ideas… some days just fly by and it feels like you have accomplished nothing. All too often we hear from others, that they get so much more work done when they simply turn everything off and just work!
In addition to better time management, when you are focusing your full efforts on work, make sure you are working on what matters and what will actually make you money. I’m sure when you are spending time setting up new FaceBook campaigns, or setting up landing pages for a new ppc campaign, it’s probably not top priority on your list of fun things to do… but it will make you money and give you more time down the road to do whatever you want.
Not only am I possibly preaching to the choir, but I am also preaching to myself. I must better self manage my time and efforts in the right areas. I have a lot of ideas and project that I want to work on, and that have become half completed and “sitting” projects for months or even years. Focus your efforts on your main income producing ideas and you will succeed that much more.
Are you currently making money online, and know you could make “that much more” if you just started to focus your full efforts in one area… and not half ass everything?
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"With great power comes great responsibility".... my Uncle Ben told me that. Haha, just kidding! I'm Zac Johnson and I've been making money online for over 10 years now. In short, I started making money online while I was in high school... but my passion for marketing and making money goes back way earlier than that. I created ZacJohnson.com to help motivate you to start making money online, and live the life the you always dreamed of.
You’re right. We should all have a “turn off instant messagers/social networks/phones/etc” day - and try surviving without electronic forms of communication.
It would be interesting to see what it would be like.
I dont think i could survive
I wouldn’t say that you are being lazy, you’re still putting in 5-7 hours a day. It’s important to put in the hard work sometimes but you’re a long time dead and it’s important to sit back and smell the roses every now and then.
Enjoy the summer and don’t feel guilty about it
I seem to be lazy at some points also. My problem is I’ll get 2hrs. in the morning and 2hrs. in the afternoon then have to wait until 9pm or so. This is my summer sched. I’ll be starting my job back up again so it’ll be less
Hah .. I can relate to all aspects of laziness. Not so much twitter but alot of plurking. Playing basketball.. didn’t know you played Zac. Maybe when you are in IzeaFest and if we have time … We can have a Blogger tournament .. ofcourse I will win but it shud be fun
You are right, absolutely. But sometimes I feel that there is no limit to the amount of money you want to earn. Some projects give you more fun and less money and some give you less fun and more money.
I think we should focus on more fun, life is all about fun. If you make $10k, you want to make $100k, then $1M, then $10M then billions, there is no limit!
I totally agree. I read a blog post once that said at the start of the day make a list of 5 things that you want to accomplish in order of priority. If you only get to 1 or 2 of them at least you know you were as productive as you could be with the time you allotted.
Yeah, I can get lazy too. I just launched my blog and have been grinding day in and day out. I’m getting burnt out. I have taken a few days off.
This is soooo true. I’m constantly battling the urge to try to do a zillion projects in one day. Little by little, I’m trying to focus on one project at a time and only move to the next when that project is done. The 80/20 rule … most people spend 80% of their time working on projects that produce 20% of their results. :S I’m starting to find it more satisfying to get one project done a day rather than half ass 5 or 10.
Right, even I am a lazy guy
“It really is quite amazing how much time you can spend online, and how little work you can get done.” TRUER WORDS NEVER SAID MY FRIEND!
I can so relate to this.
The cat photo describes super lazy very well
A time management guru once said that we should prioritize the list of things we want to do and work down the list. Complete item 1 or two will suffice for the day.
Jeflin
it;z sounds great…
Don’t give up the basketball, it’s good to get a good workout like that. I remember when I had time I used to have the same b-ball schedule and get in those afternoon pickup games. Once I am self-employed again, I’ll be back to doing that.
Yeah, that’s really true if a messenger is running, and all your friends are online, you are chatting all the time and forget to work. So turn off all the messengers is the best, and so you could work without being interrupted by any friend.
Get back to work! No, you have earned some free time, but don’t lose sight of your online goals. We need you to teach us, oh great one!
Proscrastination is an internet marketer’s worst enemy.
I found a free remedy for this though, and that’s RescueTime. I recently wrote a post about this. It truly forces me to be much more efficient and productive:
Eskil
Lol, I’m an idiot… my name became the anchor text to my link
Sorry about that. Here is the post: Don’t get Lazy.
(feel free to edit / remove one of my comments)
Focus is the key to anybody’s success, all the time and every time. I cannot stress this enough. When one spreads themselves too thin or across too many fields of interest, chances are that all efforts will suffer, or at the very least — nothing is really given the chance to fully reach victory. Better plan if you like to do a lot of things? Get one thing to a high level of success, then move on to the next one.
Zac, So true, it’s amazing how little Talk costs us, which is why it’s cheap, it simply doesn’t take much commitment. Most people wold love to make $10K a month, but how many are committed to really making it, getting up early, staying up late, doing whatever it takes to get it done. Good luck, keep up the blog as it;s something i enjoy as I’m simply a blogger and not very good at affiliate marketing and I’ve learned quite a bit.
Going a bit offtopic, Your blog rocks ! it has frigging 3600 readers, thats a gangster !
Your post definitely struck a chord with me. I build websites in between forex trading and there are some days when I have a few important things I need to do, but end up not doing any of them. It’s amazing how much time you can waste checking stats from various affiliate networks and wasting time on Youtube and the like.
Zac, you just keep doing what you do best. Build up your projects and share with us the new tricks you are learning. Thank you for providing so many useful tips for us affiliate money makers!
I’m always amazed at how I can spend an entire day at the computer and not actually get anything done at all, while other days I can focus for 2 hours and be done my whole days worth of tasks before lunch…