Many beginning bloggers stays in front of their monitor for more than 18 hours, sacrificing other aspect of their life, hoping to make it big in a short period of time. Well there’s nothing wrong with having goals, our social life, families and health surfers. When you bitten by that online bug, it’s extremely difficult to pull yourself away from your computer. I found myself working on my laptop most of the time and every spare moment I have, I push that power button on tiny laptop. Working on new programs, writing new articles, reading emails or simply surfing the internet for information, gives the feeling that I am doing something fruitful and contributing to my goal.
If you fall in this category, you better be single, with no family, friends and not interested in your health. If not, it’s time to make some changes. Many successful entrepreneurs mention that your success are determine by your daily habits. To be successful, you need to do a few repeated routines each day that propels you towards your long term goal.
Goals
Goals starts with a dream, that what motivates you to do what ever it takes to achieve it. You are not familiar with setting goals, I suggest you write down a few things at least 25 things that you wanted to accomplish in 5 years time in every aspect of your life, career, family, heath, social, etc. Goals must be precise with a definite date and a measurable unit. Example, if you want to be rich, your goal is NOT “I want to be rich in future”. First you did not define future, and you did not define rich, you could end up with a 50 cents more in your pocket when you are 80 years old. A proper statement will be “I am happy to received $50,000 passive income each month from my blog on 30 Feb 2008″. Once you have you goal you need to set up a series of daily activities that will help you nail that goal. We call this daily habits, which might be to post 3 times a day, study and research 1 new blog, enroll in a mentoring program like blogmastermind. These activities should contribute to a monthly goal which adds up to your finally goal. In other words work back from your final goal.
Setting Up A Daily Schedule
Once you have your daily habits, set a minimum time for each task. This forms up your basic time table. Timetable can be divided into blocks of 2 hours or less, to your preferences. I prefer 2 hours personally, I have attention time spend of 45 minutes or less, preparing each task takes about 5-15 minutes and finishing details about 20 minutes. Once your main block of time is filled, you can now set up time for family, friends and health. Having quality time with your family, playing time with your children, partners, will be the most important and most unpredictables. You may have your kids first school play to attend and you definitely do not want to miss this. You have a anniversary coming up and you may need to plan a dinner which may occupied a block of time allocated for work. In case like these it is good to have a flexible schedule. Keep the basis of your schedule but plan it every week, that allows flexibility and arrangement of unexpected events. The second most important would be health which includes regular exercise, mental/personal development and nutrition. This simply translate to eat healthy at fixed time, doing some form of exercise at certain time of the day and reading or listening to some form of personal improvement stuffs. Social life is equally important, you want to keep friends and make more, theres no fun being a loner.
Have a clear picture of what you need to achieve each day. Plan wisely make every minute count. Most entrepreneurs utilize every minute to complete a task. We all have the same amount of time each day, the only different is how the sucessful people are utilizing them. Most entrepreneurs wakes up at the same time each morning regardless of when they go to bed. They have a few books or cds in hand, they read in a queue, when traveling, even in the toilet. They do not pick up their phone and they don’t answer every call. It about how you value your time.
Once you have every aspect of your life plan out, you can true lead a balanced lifestyle thats fun and fulfilling on your journey to your success. Balance is the key to unlocking the door of success. A Journey like this should be traveled along, its always exciting to meet people who heading towards the same destination. So smell the flower once in awhile. It’s ok to take a break and leave your work desk, it will still be there when you come back but not your family, friends and health.
