When running an online business you have to work efficient. This rule is even more true when you are the business owner with no employees. It is easy to lose track of what you are doing or taking the day too easy and let valuable time just slip by. The loss of efficiency will be felt in your wallet in form of less money at the end of the month.Here are a few items to consider that help you to work more efficient
Maintain a List of “To Do” items
At the end of each day when you are ready to stop working, take a few moments and write down the top 5 items you have to accomplished that day. Based on this list now write down the open items you need to work on the next day. This might look weird when you start, but after a few days you have a great way of tracking your open items. When you come back to your computer the next day you know exactly where to start and what you need to do. At the end of the day you also know what you accomplished.
Group tasks and Assign Time windows
From experience you will know how long certain tasks take to be completed. When looking at your list of open items you should be able to assign certain time windows to different tasks. This will help you to structure your day much better and to reduce interruptions. Let’s say one specific task takes 4 hours. You know you have several meetings and phone calls scheduled for that morning. It would not make sense to start that 4 hour task if you will have to interrupt it for phone calls and meetings. It always makes more sense to structure your day properly to be most efficient. Start working the 4 hour task when you have a time slot big enough.
Don’t Waste Your Time checking Statistics too often
This is a big one. So many people waste time checking their financial stats too often during the day. Unless you are monitoring a new PPC campaign or a new project website it is not necessary to check your stats every 15 minutes. In fact – check your stats twice a day. Do the first check in the morning. This gives you a good overview of how the day before went and it allows to investigate issues as they arise. Check them in the early afternoon to make sure things are still going as normal. if something is entirely wrong you can even talk to an account manager of an ad network to find out if there are tracking problems as an example. That should be more than sufficient. Everything else would be a waste of your time – time you can use to be more sufficient.
Things you don’t like to do
Everyone has tasks he/she does not like to do. It is in the human nature that we face those tasks we don’t like at all. But they still need to be done. These can be the most dragging tasks and they can undermine your efficiency and your success. By properly planning for these tasks you can avoid the loss of efficiency. Start of the day with something you like to do. Now make it a habit to do the tasks you don’t like to do right after that, but do them before lunch. By following this rule you have the entire second half of the day for the stuff like to do. When we get tired from working later in the day it is much more difficult to motivate us to work on stuff we do not like. It is so much easier to motivate yourself for stuff you like to work on even if your are tired.
Make taking breaks a habit
Breaks are important for your health and your efficiency. It might look less an issue when you are in your 20’s, but by making taking breaks a habit early on you maintain a healty lifestyle. Nothing hurts an Internet entrepreneur more than being sick. Depending on your business model your income will slide. You are also working on a computer all day and certain illnesses are work related to working with computers all day. Take a quick 10-15 minute breather every 2-3 hours. Stretch yourself, get some fresh air, train your eyes by looking at something in the distance. Think about something less work related.
By following these easy rules you can improve your efficiency dramatically. Key is to be persistent and establish the right habits early on.
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