Schedule - Do you have one? Organizing for Success

[Linda Buquet]

Most of us here are self employed - for a REASON!
We don't like bosses and want to control our own destiny!

But to be successful in our business or any other you still have to work and complete certain tasks and have a plan. Thought it may be fun to share tips and techniques we have for managing our time, staying on track and getting things done. So an important key to me in the bold sentence above is CONTROL. I am working on better ways to CONTROL my time and schedule. If I let every IM, email and phone call take over and invade my time - I would never get any of the important stuff done. So I'll start with a couple things I do.

BLOGGING DISCIPLINE:
I have a COMMITMENT to blog at least once a day (weekdays) and am trying to get it up to twice a day. Some days I can't find much or am not in the mood to blog. The 1st thing I do every day before I let myself read email or check the forums is to scan all the RSS feeds I subscribe to for new ideas or news to blog about. HOW DO I MAKE MYSELF? I don't get to eat breakfast or do ANYTHING else until I get at least one blog published and pinged. PERIOD!!! There are NO exceptions. Whew, I'm hungry. Glad I blogged so I can have my healthy grains toast after this post.

PHONE CALLS:
Most calls I get are for free merchant consultations. Some of those calls are HOT new clients I would like to work with - most of the time they are not! So I don't answer the phone in the AM until I am finished blogging, reading email and checking the forums.

WEEKENDS: THE WORK GETS DONE:
Weekdays for me are really busy just interacting with people and answering questions and blogging and modding forums. I don't consider this WORK. To me it's FUN and I love it. Weekends are reserved for what I consider work. Building new client pages and promos, playing webmaster on all my sites, doing reports for clients, invoicing, backups - all that crap that needs to be done, that I don't really like doing. I do all that on weekends when things are quieter and I can just focus on getting stuff done.

So how about you? Do you have a schedule or any tricks that help you get things done or stay organized?

[stephfoster]

With two small kids I can't easily keep to a schedule, so rather than a daily schedule I have weekly goals. Some weeks it's easier than others to meet my goals (I'm way behind this week, for example, because we're having my son's first birthday party tomorrow), but it gives me something to focus on.

[Linda Buquet]

Hug birthday boy for us Steph!