Entries Tagged 'Working Efficiently' ↓

As a single work at home mom with two insanely rambunctious kids, it’s difficult to wash a load of laundry let alone get any work done on the computer.

I’ve picked up a few things over the years that helps me balance work and family (and “me time”). I have to admit that I don’t always practice what I preach but I do my best and it really does work when you manage to stay focused.

JUST DO IT

How many times have you had a great idea only to let it die because you waited too long to put it into action? Having that great idea isn’t enough. Writing it down on paper isn’t enough. You need to start acting on it right away.

• If you want to start a new site, start by buying the domain name right away.
• If you want to write an ebook, sit down with a pen and paper and create an outline.
• If you want to create an email course, put up a subscribe form and get crackin’ on the first lesson.

Just do it! Once you start that first step, continue on and keep making steps, even if they’re baby steps.

Something John Reese said in his blog post How To Get Everything You Want in 24 Hours really struck a chord with me.

“You must do something every single day towards accomplishing your goal. It doesn’t matter how big or how small this effort has to be. It just has to be something.”

That is a great post to read if you have trouble taking action. I even printed that quote out and have it by my computer at all times. Every time I look at it I want to work!

END DISTRACTIONS

Who doesn’t love Twitter? Even though Twitter can be a great tool for building contacts, relationship and traffic, it can also be a huge time suck. Instant messaging, email, reading RSS feeds – all those things can consume a huge amount of time without you realizing it.

Sometimes I just have to turn all those things off if I want to get any work done. Other times, I allow myself a certain amount of time to use them. If you want to get really serious, you can time yourself to see just how much time you spend on things that aren’t benefiting your business. SlimTimer works perfectly for me. Scary how much time you lose to certain things each day!

ONE THING AT A TIME

I can’t tell you how many text files I have on my computer of articles/blog posts/ebooks I’ve started writing but didn’t finish. I’ve been in the process of cleaning them all up and I’ve achieved a lot in the past few weeks but I’ve implemented a few “rules” for myself to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand again.

I keep my computer desktop completely clean except for one folder, “To Do”. When I start a new project, I save it to my desktop. I will not allow myself to put it into my To Do folder until it’s complete. When it is complete, I rename the file to add “done” at the end. Then when I go to publish new content, I have all my “done” files in my To Do folder.

This works for me because I despise clutter and I can’t stand icons on my desktop. I’m a bit strange that way. I can’t stand anything on my counter tops either and fridge magnets are a huge no-no in my house. Poo on clutter, including half-finished text files all over my desktop.

Sometimes it’s hard to finish a project while you’re working on it because you come up with even more ideas while you’re in the process. This gets overwhelming and leads to complete burn-out so I’ve trained myself not to think about anything else while I’m working on something.

KEEP A SCHEDULE

Whether your kids are still at home with you or are going to school during the day, you need some kind of schedule or routine. My routine is always changing and needs to be very versatile. My kids are still young and most of my time is devoted to them so I might have a few months in a row where I get up early and work before they wake up, then I might have a few months where I work after they go to bed.

If you’re just flying by the seat of your pants, you should consider adding some kind of structure into your day. Starting a schedule for myself has added to my productivity immensely.

I’ve tried a lot of online tools like Google Calendar to keep a schedule, but I always come back to my handy dandy notebook. I love my daily planner and I would probably cry like a little girl if I lost it. A lot of WAHMs like to use Remember The Milk which can actually be used with Google Calendar so it’s worth checking out if you’re in need of a little routine-making action.

CONCLUSION

We’re all different. We all have different situations at home and we all have different goals and tasks that need to be accomplished every day.

It’s important to make the best of your time so that you can find a healthy balance for you and your family. Nobody said being a work at home mom was easy, but it can be very rewarding. The trick is to find what works for you.

Promising a Link Lovin’ post on Friday + forgetting and not delivering it = epic FAIL. I just turned 27 an hour and a half ago so I’ll blame old age. Better late than never right?

If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you have those days when you have no clue what day of the week it is, let alone what time of day it is. Men With Pens have some fixes for us crazy time-challenged foo’s.

I mentioned in my Google Alerts post about deep-linking to your blog posts when commenting on other blogs, but Jenstar has another clever way of gaining pageviews and getting some use out of older posts.

Google Analytics is a very powerful program to have under your belt but it can be pretty confusing. It’s so much more than just a traffic stat program and it has a lot of features. Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing has a short video that I found really helpful. (By the way, Web Marketing For Dummies – which he co-authored – is available so check it out.)

And because it’s me birthday and it happens to be St. Patrick’s Day, I thought I’d leave you with a post from the Ezine Articles blog that has a few interesting facts about St. Patty’s day that I didn’t know before.

Now I’m off to paint my face green and eat a bunch of green birthday cake after guzzling some green beer.

Coding and designing is not my strong point, but these past few weeks I have learned a lot and am proud to say that I pulled some CSS code right out of my butt and it actually worked! It’s great to be able to have an idea of what you want a web page to do and know what code to write to make it do exactly that.

One of the tools I’ve been using will have to take most of that credit – WampServer. I’m not exactly sure what took me so long to download this, but I’m almost sick to my stomach when I think about how much time I’ve wasted before installing it.

This handy dandy little program is perfect for anyone who customizes Wordpress themes. I’m sure there are lots of other methods but this one works perfectly for me, and it’s allowed me to learn CSS much more quickly than before. Did I mention that WampServer is free?

So what does WampServer do?

Let’s say you want to spruce up your Wordpress theme a little bit, or put up a brand new theme, but you don’t want all your visitors to see any changes (or mistakes) you’ve made until you’re finished. Installing WampServer allows you to use your computer like a server so you can install Wordpress locally. You can make all the changes you want and nobody will ever see. When you’re done, just copy the code and paste over your existing Wordpress files on your regular server.

This is also a great way to mess around with some code to see what does what. Delete some code, save the file, refresh your page, and see what happened. Now you know what that chunk of CSS you just deleted was for. If it was something slightly important, just overwrite the file with the original one you’ve smartly kept on backup.

After years of messing around with CSS, this is hands down the best method I’ve used to figure out just what the hell I’m doing – and in such a short amount of time. Not to mention the fact that I can customize a Wordpress theme in a fraction of the time it used to take me. There’s gold in that thar WampServer.

Christmas has finally come and gone, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I was extremely glad it’s over! As much as I love spending time with my family, the holidays can be a really stressful time.

Something else that always happens to me over the holidays is I seem to lose my groove. My work groove that is.

Even though I have done quite a bit of work in the past few days behind the scenes, I haven’t done as much as I wanted to.

That’s why I’m glad I read this post at John Reese’s blog. He doesn’t update often, but when he does it’s always a worthy read. He always makes me stop and think which ends up alternating my train of thought indefinitely (and in a positive way I might add).

I’m horrible for putting things off until the last minute, or constantly telling myself “I’ll do it tomorrow”, but after this morning, I think things will be changing.

If you’re a big procrastinator like me, you’ll definitely want to read that post.

Something else you’ll want to do is have a clear idea in your head about your goals for 2009. In fact, you should write them down and keep them somewhere accessible – somewhere you’ll be looking at frequently. I plan on using one of my awesome multi-colored funky girly notebooks to store my 2009 goals in and I’ll be keeping it right beside my computer on my desk so that I never forget.

I’ll also be creating a plan to help me reach each of my goals along with a reasonable yet challenging timeline. I want 2009 to be my best year yet and I’ve been a busy little beaver acquiring all the tools and knowledge need to accomplish that. I would love for you to make 2009 your best year as well.

Let’s kick some recession ass!

It’s not uncommon for bloggers to spend a huge amount of time in front of the computer. Blogging can be really time consuming. Between writing posts, searching for images to include in your posts, managing email, networking, marketing, creating your own information products to sell, tweaking your blog’s theme, creating a newsletter, etc., you can easily let an entire day slip by without noticing.

Because of this, it’s important to make sure you break up that time with bursts of activity every now and then which will:

1. Ease the monotony of work and keep you from turning into a zombie
2. Clear your head so you can come back with a fresh look on things
3. Keep your circulation flowing, calories burning, and muscles working

That’s just naming a few reasons. I also find that I’m more productive this way, both online and in the house. My kids happily take up most of my time (which is why I always wanted to work from home) so I usually don’t have a problem finding reasons to get away from the computer.

But when one is napping and the other is busy drawing me Harry Potter pictures – which can literally take hours – I have to remind myself to get up at frequent intervals. If I don’t, my back and legs get sore and my productivity goes way down.

I like to break up long stretches of work by doing a load of laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, taking out the garbage, etc. Sounds fun, I know.

I don’t let myself watch TV or do any other leisure activities until my “To Do” list is finished, plus I find that most of those activities are just sucking my energy dry and will leave me not wanting to return to my work.

So if you’re the type to sit until it’s all done, then get up while hearing the groan and creaking of your bones, blinking and looking around like you’re in an unfamiliar place, it might be time to add some interval training.

Get off your butt at least once an hour and do something! You may very well see an improvement in both your health, and your work.