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Finding Enough Time ...

To build a part time job or business

A simple question, but not so simple to answer. Or so I thought.

I was recently asked this question. As I thought about it, I considered what had built, and achieved over the years. Maybe I could jot down what I did to find the time?

Then I found a basic secret, and you will find it as you read.

My secret has enabled me to write a book, study toward a post-graduate degree, create several Internet business sites, create a course on Internet Business, be involved in many essential daily activities plus live a life. My secret creates the extra time needed to start your business.

My secret has been proven over the last three years to work, because it has worked for me. Maybe all or parts can assist YOU to find the time to build a different, perhaps new direction in life, based on your passions, on what you REALLY enjoy.

Fascinated …then read on.

To build a part-time business whilst running the rest of your life is no mean feat, and anyone who accomplishes it should be justly proud. Many successful small businesses and also large businesses (eg Henry Ford) have had their origins in just such a beginning.

So what is the answer, I hear you ask.

The answer will come through some exercises and some thinking. You will need a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. Go and get it now.

Most important, is NOT to jump ahead. Complete this brief exercise.

With a little thinking, you will be completed in about 10 minutes, and have discovered some life changing tools along the way.

Before you can start a journey, you need to know where you are now.

Question 1: How do you use your time now?

Exercise 1

Take that sheet of paper, divide it into eight equal columns, and write these headings on each column:

Time Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

5 am
6 am
7am
..
10 pm
11 pm
12 am
1 am
2 am
3 am
4 am

Vertically under “Time”, write the 24 hours

starting with 5am, 6, 7 … 11pm, 12am … 3am, 4am.

Now complete the table with what you did last week – use a pencil.

Is this typical week? Adjust now so that it reflects your average week.

Some Examples:

Gym on Tuesday 5 - 6pm & Thursday 5 - 6pm
Dinner from 7 – 8pm
TV from 8 – 10pm
Sleep from 11- 6am
Travelling time
Coffee time or the equivalent
Lunch time
Job time.

Include everything that you can remember and summarise into blocks of an hour. If you cannot remember, complete the table for this week – start with today.

Exercise 2

With your pencil tick those items that are critical, to your well-being, eg. your family time. You will know what is important to you. Think on this carefully.

What is left are non-critical items, possibly TV, maybe reading a magazine?

Be ruthless and honest in your decision-making for these two groups.

My non-critical times included TV, travelling to meetings, and lunch-time when I am unable to lunch with others. Yours may include some of these or other items.

How much time makes up your non-critical time ? ________
Is it fairly well distributed across the week or bunched up ? ________

Question 2: How fast do you wish to create and build your iBusiness Site?

This is perhaps a crucial question, as it will affect your life quite dramatically. If the answer is fast, then your part-time business will take over your life. Can I suggest that too fast is not really good unless you do truly have the time available. Too fast may not create a supportive environment from family and friends in which to create your dream. This leads into Question 3.

Question 3: How do you maintain enthusiasm and energy?

A great question, thank you for asking.

I believe BALANCE is needed in your life, with definite time for the critical items which require valuable time. These could include:

Relationships:

Girl-friend, boy-friend, family, partner, spouse, children, brothers, sisters … these all give life meaning.

Time for yourself:

Sort of R & R, and could include exercise. A time to “sharpen the saw” (Covey)

Work:

the “day job” or your current job – give it its due, be a valuable employee, learn business principles from your “day job”, be observant. Volunteer for exercises that will help you with your part-time business, eg selling, planning, a course on project management, being team leader. Your day-job can be your “business university” learning every day for your business venture.

Others: etc.

Most important is to be in balance.

A good resource for a life in balance is Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” – a great read.

Question 4: With Balance in mind, how fast should I build my iBusiness?

Obviously, this is a personal question, and I offer here only my journey and learnings. When I tried for Very Fast, I put my family off-side. This is not good, as you need their support. When I went Too Slow,I became frustrated. So I go for balanced.

Question 5: Isn’t it time to tell me the Secret !

You are impatient.

You want to know how I wrote a book, and built those sites whilst living the rest of my life. Here is my plan.

MY PLAN:

I take the non-critical time like you have identified above, and use it to build my iBusiness Site. I simply optimise otherwise wasted time (ie wasted to me).

As well, I have a goal, a plan, and I go …

Slow, steady and at a regular pace.

I do not go “flat out”, racing to build a site.

This is my incredible secret !!
It is supported by several other “slow, steady and regular” examples:

How do you build a fortune? One cent at a time.
The famous question: how do you eat an elephant (yukkk)? One bite at a time.

You see, slow, steady and regular is the key to building a highly valued asset of solid quality information that your customers’ desire.

And like money growing at compound interest, if you have more than 20 well written and optimised pages, each additional page is more quickly found, and visitors more quickly visit – a sort of “snow-ball” effect to a point.

What’s the DO-ABLE secret? Slow, steady and at a regular pace.

The important word, is regular. A small effort regularly applied, gradually builds a huge well trafficed site. Build one page a week (or each two weeks) regularly, and you will be amazed at what you can do.

This can set a DO-ABLE SMART goal,
not an impossible, frustrating exercise because you went too fast, missed some vital optimisation, and are growing frustrated with low visitor numbers.

Additional, very important ideas

Focus

One issue when building an iBusiness is focus. The ability to maintain focus is important to the optimum use of your time.

I always start a session with a goal in mind. This goal as best as possible needs to be achievable in the half hour, hour or more that I have available.

The reason why focus can be an issue is because the Internet offers many distractions, from related information but off at a tangent, to relevant information to your project, but not useful for your immediate needs, right through to just plain distracting like catching up on the latest new from the Sydney Morning Herald.

What do you do about welcome distractions, that you just should not read right now? Here are my solutions that I use to manage distractions.

Including the date and Internet address (URL), I :

. print it out to read when traveling and place in my traveling folder;
. eMail to my web-address to read at a better time;
. file on my Palm Pilot PDA** with a sound alert at a pre-determined time.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The PDA is good as I can always find it, it is not extra paper and as it is digital, I can always move it to other places. Refer to Tools below for more on a PDA.

So endeavour to not be distracted. Yes I know its hard, but you will be extremely productive if you can manage these interruptions, but shifting the important ones to another time.

And do you know what … it does work. Be conscious of your focus.

Here's another very powerful concept on Focus ...

FOCUS on your client: appearance, how they speak, their NEEDS, the question asked, Their PROBLEM ... hey YOU can solve that problem ...

FOCUS on the client, the visitor YOUR site attracts. Another VERY important FOCUS !!

Perseverence

Remember the secret: slow, steady, regular.
It is really the story of the “hair and the totoise”, and we all know who won that race.

For a couple of months after starting, nothing much happens. Then a visitor or two arrive, as if by magic – and you celebrate.

You persevere, slow, steady, regular writing, building, perhaps a page a week, or a page every two weeks. Then more visitors arrive, your perseverance is rewarded.

When you count your pages, it’s maybe 20 or more … wow, and whilst you lived a life!!

Perseverence, create a page, grow an iBusiness. At some stage, you may strike a hump, with no further increase in your traffic. This is when you look up the advanced strategies and perhaps build partner links.

A well respected US President cannot be wrong after reaching and serving in such a position.

Tools

Next to your pencil, paper, and rubber is my indispensable PDA **

** PDA: Personal Digital Assistant is a term for any small mobile hand held device that provides computing and information storage retrieval capabilities for personal or business use, often for keeping schedule calendars and address book information handy

You do not need a PDA, but I have found it a simply marvellous tool.

A basic PDA, is not too expensive these days, with a basic Palm Pilot ™ device below $140 USD ($180 AUD, €120 EUR, ₤77 GBP). Other devices use a Windows operating system. Personally, I have found the Palm the most reliable with little trouble. I have used three PDAs since 1998 when the Palm Pilot arrived on the market. All are still working, I simply upgraded.

What can you do with a PDA?
You can enter text in hand writing and have it digitized and moved anywhere, eg into eMail, into a Word document, into FrontPage ™ or Dreamweaver ™ You can write anywhere, at anytime, close it and put in your pocket or hand bag. It is small and unobtrusive.

This means you WRITE ONCE, and save time. Using paper, you write once, then you write again into a word-processor. I often write on a Palm PDA in my lunchtime, synchronise with my computer, then email to my web-address as a backup. I can then download later at home to complete the work. This is an AMAZING way to make the best use of time.

You can download Internet documents into the PDA to read at another time, and with enough memory, you may never have to empty it. Truly amazing.

You can set alarms in the Calendar to beep and remind you of events, write up ToDo lists and Address Lists, add your favourite programs, and synchronise with the Palm Desktop or with Microsoft Outlook – easy.

In short, a precious business tool, as it assists with time management.

Another valuable tool is to be able to type faster. Voice recognition is not a common tool today (yet!) where you dictate to your computer and it converts to speech to text. So one area for me to work on soon is to type faster – my next project.

My secret to successfully create a business whilst still working and living life can be summarised as follows:

Plan 1 - Discovery

A. Think about your use of time now
Write down on the a grid as described above – very important to write down.
You should not leave this page
until you have completed Question 1, Exercises 1 and 2.

B. Identify your non-critical time.
C. Consider Balance.

Plan 2 - Action

A. Create SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. An example, could be to build one page for the Site once a week. Must be do-able.
B. Slow, steady and regular use of your non-critical time.
C. Focus and persevere

With us all having 24 hours in a day, a plan that is implemented with perseverance, in a slow, steady and regular way will succeed by maintaining family balance, and focus. Most important, will be the emergence of a true asset which will provide a stream of passive income.

Then you will sit back one day, and say “Wow, I did that amongst all the rest of my life”. And you will be justly proud.

So now you know how I wrote a book, researched and started a couple of Internet Businesses and created this course, amongst other things.

I sincerely wish you all the best as you begin, or restart your iBusiness venture.

Warren

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