About a week ago I wrote “How To Add A Different Perspective To Your Blog” (↑). I mentioned Chris Garrett (↑) — a professional Blogger, who currently offers to write guest posts on the Blogs of and for his readers. Today, Chris announced the first posts that he wrote. Here they are, and believe me, they are a great “read”.
Here are the direct links to those posts: Each one will open in a new browser window:
Each of these posts demonstrate what skilled writer Chris Garrett is. The posts are condensed to the essence, contain valuable, to the point information and are fun to read at the same time. Chris Garrett is a blogging and internet marketing consultant. Read more about him on Chris Blog.
I hope Chris will continue his “5 Tips” series of posts. Since I suggest that click through and read these posts, I let you go here. I will stay tuned, definitely.
An important aspect is setting your priorities straight and if done right, you are able to get the “most” out of your time. What is the “most” for you? Money, better health, less stress, growing your business fast, or working less?
In Part 4 I am putting all loose ends together, do a recap of all steps, and tell you, what I am personally using to keep myself organized.
Since this article has 9 pages, I don't publish it on the blog. I have created a PDF document that my newsletter subscriber can download.
If you enjoyed reading the first 3 parts of this series, you definitely will not want to miss the last issue.
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Update: Part 4 of this series is finally available again for my newsletter subscribers, as of March 07, 2008
Earlier I have written about the value of comments and trackbacks for a blog, and I have joined the No NoFollow (↑) movement to show appreciation for my readers' contributions. That's only one side of the coin.
The other side is that you can and should allow other authorities to contribute to your blog. This will bring in some fresh “air”, will organically create some cross-linking between blogs, and your readers will enjoy it. Let me tell you several ways — by no means all — how you can do this. It actually comes down to only two methods in this todays post.
Interviews
Guest Authors Thanks to Chris Garrett (↑) for inspiring this one.
Another week is almost over. I hope you can look back and say to yourself, “That was a good, a productive week, and I even had enough time for my family and friends.” So far we have learned that a stronger focus does help you being more productive, which in turn helps you being able to spend more time with fun things.
Now a question,
“Do you already have an outline for a plan of actions for the upcoming week?”
Today's lecture deals with that, “Priorities and Planning”.
A short reminder: You should assign a time slot of one (1) hour each week to assess the status of each of your impact areas and define actions for further improvement during the following week. In a large corporation you will go into meetings with your team, in a small home office situation you analyze your stats by yourself.
The advantage about focusing on impact areas is that you are less likely to miss something.
Last week I introduced the “Touch It - Do It - concept for more productivity.” It basically requires that you stay focused and complete a task, once you have started working on it. No more task switching! It always takes ( = wastes ) some time to get tuned in for the current task in front of you. Don't switch it. Start and complete it. Then the next one, and the next one, etc.
But how to deal with all the interruptions during the day?
The phone rings, a co-worker comes into my office, …
If it happens that you work in your home office, your kids or your wife may come in, … How are you dealing with it or how should you deal with this?
When you are reading articles from successful business people, artists, managers you quickly see that they value their time highly and don't allow interruptions. They have certain time slots during the day, when they don't pick up the phone and have the door to their office closed.
Some may have 1 hour, some even 4 or 5 hours depending on the kind of work they do. They only deal with the most important tasks of their business. This is not limited to business it could also be the daily training for an athlete, or practicing for a musician.
Steve Pavlina (*) made an interesting point on his blog today: “Reaction vs. Response (↑)”.
Steve writes about some teachings in martial arts, where the difference between reacting and responding is a subject of training. To put it short in my own words:
Reaction is dictated and controlled by the other party, whereas
Response is under your control.
This is an analogy for business life as well. Now, my opening question becomes a different, a deeper meaning.
How many times do you think did the following happen to you?
You think about something like getting more traffic to your Web site, or finally writing an article. Then you start doing it, but next you bail out at the first opportunity. You stop and do something else. You dig even deeper into the next task just to create an excuse and gain confidence that you are doing the right thing.
Most likely this next task is more enjoyable and less important at the same time. You get it done, but you don't achieve as much, when you repeatedly put off more important tasks.
The more often you put off the “first” task, the more difficult it will become next time and instead of working on it, you probably start to look for another “less important” task right away.
What makes you money in your job, doesn't necessarily make you money, when freelancing. Many freelancers have to learn that the hard way.
Are you exceptional good in your job?
Do you believe that your boss is not paying you enough?
Are you tired of working for someone else?
Then you are probably thinking about working as freelancer. Beware that almost everything will change once you have “fired your boss”.
Who will give you the paycheck?
Who will tell you what to do?
Who will make you to work harder?
…
Knowing the correct answer to those questions is one key ingredient to your success as freelancer. The freedom, which comes from having no boss, is dangerous to those with no plan and little or no discipline.