How to Manage Your Time in Your Internet Business – Work Better and Have More Fun

This is a guest post by Alex Papa.

More and more people are working from home these days, whether as freelancers, entrepreneurs or telecommuters for an outside company.

It’s projected that, by 2012, as much as 25% of the workforce will be working from a home office. This is great news for those who have always dreamed of escaping from the cubicle in an office block. However, though one of the benefits most of us have dreamed of is having control of our time, many people are surprised to find they have less of it once they’re working at home.

As someone who worked 40-hour weeks for years, I was really floored by how much time got away from me once I made the transition to blogging full time. I went from working 40 hours a week to working almost 60. I’m not much of a time management expert anyway, but I did think I’d have more time to live my life once I started working at home. It took some trial and error to find some ways to manage my time even though I was the only one managing my time. Here are a few things I’ve found that helped me get on track with my internet business so that I could have time to do all those things I came home to do.

Electronic Planners are Awesome, But £2 Desk Calendars are Better:

I am work addict and a good organizer of my priorities. Unfortunately, the former is stronger than the latter. While you might not be likewise afflicted, you may have found, like me, that due dates and deadlines have to be right in front of your eyes to stay in the front of your priorities. I do have an electronic planner in my laptop and an App planner in my iPhone, but all of my deadlines and due dates are on my small £2 paper calendar from Tesco and with my discount coupon code it was even cheaper. This way, the things that I really have to do are staring me in the face.

Write Your To-Do List Backwards:

This one applies to the desk calendar, too. I’ve found great success from writing my due dates and deadlines down, then working backwards. For instance, if I have 5 guest posts on list due Friday, I’ll write “Submit 5 Guest Posts” on the Friday space, then work backwards. I may break it down to one article per day, and enter “Write 1 Guest Post” on the spaces for Monday through Friday. This seems to help me stay on track much better than just writing the due date on Friday. That always seemed to result in me wasting time Monday through Wednesday, then stressing out and working a writing marathon Thursday and Friday.

Schedule Your Breaks:

It didn’t take me long to figure out that all that freedom of control over my time didn’t mean I wanted all of my time to be unstructured. Not long after starting to blog fulltime, I begun scheduling regular breaks just like in any job. I found I didn’t resent being told when I could have lunch, as long as I was the one setting the schedule. But, I am a lot more productive now that I was when I ate when I got hungry and took a coffee break when I needed caffeine. I get more done during the work times and enjoy my breaks more.

How do you manage your time in your blogging business? Share your thoughts.

About The Author:

Alex Papa has been an online marketer for over 5 years. He manages a portfolio of thriving business entities. On his sites you will find the latest Norton 360 Coupon and Gotomeeting discount codes.

Image Credit: Crystal