As an online marketer you always face a lack of time. There is so much to be achieved and done but the hours in a day are numbered.
If you are in a job like me, you would instantly understand what I mean. If you are married and have a family, your time is further limited.
Added to that is the number of chores that you need to do to accomplish your business goals.
Therefore you cannot afford to get distracted.
There are distractions offline and online as well.
Internet is so vast that you get lost every now and then. One click leads t another and then there are so many temptations. Here are the seven distractions and temptations that are commonly faced and should be avoided.
While you struggle with time management or making your business successful, take care of these.
1. Email
How often you check your email. Email is important mode of communication but that should not compel you to check it every now and then.
We often do it without realizing the amount of time spent on it. I am not going to bore you here with stats. But you can on an average save half an hour per day if yo stick to email checking only twice a day.
2. Stats Checking
Checking your website stats to see if your visitors have increased is another activity that takes up time and energy of a marketer. It is an activity that I have done a lot in the beginning and it appears quite thrilling to see number of visitors increased.
Checking your Alexa rank, page rank, predicted page rank, checking your backlinks, calculating your website worth and other similar activities need not be done on daily basis.
Rather they should be planned and analyzed effectively on monthly basis or every two weeks if you are too enthusiastic about the stats.
There is no point wasting your daily time on these.
3. Downloads
The beauty of digital world is absence of tangibility. All you need to do is to click and product is yours, on your disc.
This effortless acquisition of products tempts us to download every other available product.
You may get them free but they do cost on your time. Let us visualize what happen
You download a product, unzip it and then scroll through it only to find that while package was tempting the product actually is not or you take a mental note to read it later.
And t product goes to heap of other products, noted for future opening but never reopened.
So stop downloading unnecessary products. Whenever you come across a product ask yourself – Do I need that. Does it fit my business plans.
If it does not, forget it.
4. Idle Surfing
Have you ever sat in front of TV with an intention to get up after 10 minutes. Just to relax or destress.
You hold the remote and start surfing. You jump the channels and before you realize an hour already passes.
Web is even worse. You can open multiple tabs, there are pictures, text, videos, things to download. You can get lost if you are surfing for fun.
A piece of news may take you to the news site. A picture of semi nude model might interest you at that site and to you also find a link to other pictures of the model. While you look at what your senses perceive as beauty, you get across a nice video of the model.
That brings you to YouTube and you are lost in he videos for the eternity.
5. Lurking In Forums
Forums could be great places to learn, interact, network, post items, get backlinks and build your reputation and your business.
But lurking in the forums just to search for a new thrill or participate in forums at the cost of your own business is a bad idea.
It can result in wasted hours without bringing anything in return.
6. Designing and Redisigning Your Site
You may never get satisfied from look of your site. That in one way is good thing. You think of constantly improving it. But that can also result in increased time being devoted to this aspect and neglecting your main chores.
WordPress and other simple content management systems make it a breeze to update your site themes and designs. That gives you more options and temptation for increased trials.
But there is no perfect theme or design.
Once you have a reasonably good looking site, you should concentrate on building your content rather than worrying about the looks. Once your business grows, you can adopt new things and when the need becomes pressing you might undertake a change.
Decorations do not add a thing to your business.
7. Learning New Skills That You Do Not Need
I am a great fan of learning. But there are so many skills required for conducting an online business that it is impossible to learn them all. There are some basic skills that each of us need to have. These are simple things like typing, using internet and writing. A basic knowledge of HTML is not a necessity but can be helpful.
You tend to get knowledged as you work on your business. But you should not aim to master the skills until you want to excel in that area. Thus leaning HTML can be helpful but if you are not in web designing niche, you are not going to going to be benefited by mastering the art.
Rather it is wastage of time.
Most of the marketers tend to learn almost everything because they do not consider outsourcing as solution. But it is more important to move forward with effective utilization of resources.
What distractions do you face in your daily work and how do you manage them?
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Tags: effective business habits, effective business management, how to avoid distractions, online distraction, Time Management, time wastage
