February 25, 2008
What Do You Wish You Knew Way Back Then?
Arika Liddiard has sent me a question just in time for Tough Question Tuesday…so to honor her request, I’m answering her question and then asking you to do the same. Wanna play?
Arika asks:
“What one thing, that you know now, do you wish you had known when you first started working from home that would have made things easier for you?”
What I Wish I Knew: I am more productive and focused when I limit my work time.
Why: When I first started working online, I was on the darned computer a LOT. At first, when I didn’t know what I was doing at all, I was always hunting for that magical answer, surfing from forum to forum, following links, Google searches. Boy, that was distracting and exhausting.
Even when it started to click for me, I still had this mistaken idea that I had to put in a lot of hours to ensure the profitability of my business. Instead, I ended up wasting a lot of time on the computer, starting projects I should have thought through first and I was still distracted and exhausted.
Eventually, I figured out that I needed to limit my time at the computer and to have a focused plan each time I pushed that power button. The result - productive and profitable work being done…and I’m no longer so distracted (never say never!) or exhausted.
So what about you? What’s the one thing you wish you knew?
Free Marketing Course
I wish I’d known that I needed to spend most of my time marketing when I first started started working from home.
Instead I spent (wasted?) so much time producing fabulous products and services when I didn’t even know if anyone wanted them - and then wondered how I was going to sell them!
The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Thanks so much for playing along Alice.
I too struggle with this same thing. Not as much as I did in the beginning, and slowly I’m making changes to improve my focus because, as you know, with a 3rd baby on the way, there is no way I can spend the time at the computer I did then or even now, but I still have a business to grow.
Anyone else who wants to join in, feel free to do so, can’t wait to see your responses.
I am working on a time inventory this week to see exactly where I am spending my time - I have a feeling that I am not spending time as productively as I should so it was really interesting to see you are blogging about this very thing.
Nicely said Alice, I think we all can get distracted especially in the beginning. If I could say one thing to my previous self it would be to stop, drop, and roll.
Stop looking for the magical answer, drop the dead weight (ie. ebooks I never applied), and then roll.. Just get moving into one direction instead of scattering yourself. I still have to follow my own advice daily!
I also had to stop, drop, and roll for real one day when my sweater caught fire as I was lighting the dinner candles years back. The kids will never forget that day, they all thought it was so funny because I barely had any fire. But at least they know now what to do. LOL!
I think the biggest challenge for me getting started was to figure out what I needed to learn, what was most critical to master or at least develop skills at.
Html for keeping your websites nice-looking (even if you work off of a template or Wordpress blog theme) and really learning about linking (especially building affliate links) became the most critical thing for me, and unfortunately I didn’t get to this right away. I was too busy playing around with clipart and free blogs!
And then it helps if you can learn just enough Photoshop to throw together your own headers, which adds to the visual impact of your blogs. Believe me, you don’t have to know MUCH Photoshop to do this. But it’s very helpful to just learn to do your own headers, especially when you start building out a bunch of sites.
Jennifer
I wish I knew automation is the key to FREEDOM. After all, you don’t want to get your internet business up and running and find out you’ve just invented yourself another J.O.B.
I also wish I was using products from Aaron Brandon he certainly enabled me to have a hands-free business, letting me enjoy life and work ON my business instead of IN my business.
How much time I would have saved, but thats why they say hindsight is 20/20 !
Not focusing on one niche/market.
Not publishing a blog to a subdomain (blogspot). It still gets traffic - yuck!