How to be an Extremely Focused Marketer in the Extremely Distracted World?
How long does it take for me to write this article? How long does it take for you to read? Without any intention to exaggerate things or be pathetic, I have to admit that we live in an extremely distracted world. Does the following scenario sound familiar to you? You're about to read or write an article, read or reply to an email, but you've been "interrupted" a half a dozen times. Your smartphone is just letting you know that you have new messages, tweets, or notifications to check. You have to be a true artist to stay focus all the time. This is how a 55-minute job turns into a 55-minute job. At the end of the day, you suddenly become aware of this problem. What I've been doing all day? Probably, that's the main reason an 8-hour working day seems like a bad joke.
What I've learned from my hourly based projects?
An ideal scenario would be to locate yourself in the middle of nowhere. There you can focus entirely on your own work. Yet, the trouble is that you have to travel from somewhere to nowhere every single day. What if you don't have The Internet out there somewhere, which is actually nowhere? Back to nature seems like a great marketing slogan, but I'm not quite sure it's really effective. I'm going to save you some invaluable time. I've already tried to turn one of my rooms into an urban jungle place for work, some kind of a total isolation more or less, and I failed.
Then, one fine day I've finally accepted, because I realized it much earlier, that there's a huge difference between my so-called hourly and fixed price projects. When you work as a freelancer, you have to choose between these two, or the client will do it for you. So, I've noticed that my dearest "fixed" projects were actually surprisingly flexible. Let me write a line or two, then let me check this and that. You work all day long, but you can't anything else. On the other side, when you're working on an hourly-based project, you have this tick-tack app on your computer, which takes now-I-got-you screenshots and counts how many times you use your keyboard/mouse. It's quite an exhausting activity, but once you're done, you can enjoy the rest of the day freely. For what is worth, one "hourly" hour of work easily turns into 75 or 90 minutes of total time, because I have to take a break every now and then. Yet, I get paid only for the "effective" time I spent working on my project. So, what's the moral of this freelance example?
Are you obsessed with time passing? Well, you should be!
This is exactly how I ended up one day using a stopwatch on my smartphone outside a gym. If I can use a calorie diary, what's wrong with a private "time calculator" for business purposes? You can rest assured that after a day or two of this new routine, I was ready to admit some unpleasant things to myself. Spending two hours to write a single article or from 10 to 12 hours working daily was nothing more than an excuse to be "flexible." It's definitely not an enjoyable thing to draw borders all over your life between the moment you work for real and don't work also for real. However, that's the only way not to get lost in translation of daily work.
Right now, I will work and will finish what I started with no or at least very few interruptions. Then, I will allow myself a luxury of being distracted as much as I want. The funny thing, though, is that during my university days I was able to do a much quality work with no stopwatch and similar apps. I can thank only the good old pressure for that. You know that you have to prepare for your exam, so you have all motivation in the world packed within your four walls. On the other hand, you know that the great life of parties and love is waiting for you outside. So, it's going to be worth it. All that you have to sacrifice, you're going to "compensate" properly. This Dostoevsky crime/punishment pain/joy sacrifice/reward working routine worked perfectly for me. Some of my friends managed to study every single day considerable less compared to my "red alert" days. Yet, my justification was that those who don't work hard also don't party hard.
The world isn't going to change, you have to change
I think that Ralph Waldo Emerson said something that we should make our world suit us if we didn't like it. Well, it was easy for him to say something like this, because he was a 19th-century brainiac. You want to change the modern world? Good luck with that. If there's the "third way," then I'm all ears to hear about it. Oh, my time's up, my smartphone's stopwatch says this is all what you'll get in this post.
What I've learned from my hourly based projects?
An ideal scenario would be to locate yourself in the middle of nowhere. There you can focus entirely on your own work. Yet, the trouble is that you have to travel from somewhere to nowhere every single day. What if you don't have The Internet out there somewhere, which is actually nowhere? Back to nature seems like a great marketing slogan, but I'm not quite sure it's really effective. I'm going to save you some invaluable time. I've already tried to turn one of my rooms into an urban jungle place for work, some kind of a total isolation more or less, and I failed.
Then, one fine day I've finally accepted, because I realized it much earlier, that there's a huge difference between my so-called hourly and fixed price projects. When you work as a freelancer, you have to choose between these two, or the client will do it for you. So, I've noticed that my dearest "fixed" projects were actually surprisingly flexible. Let me write a line or two, then let me check this and that. You work all day long, but you can't anything else. On the other side, when you're working on an hourly-based project, you have this tick-tack app on your computer, which takes now-I-got-you screenshots and counts how many times you use your keyboard/mouse. It's quite an exhausting activity, but once you're done, you can enjoy the rest of the day freely. For what is worth, one "hourly" hour of work easily turns into 75 or 90 minutes of total time, because I have to take a break every now and then. Yet, I get paid only for the "effective" time I spent working on my project. So, what's the moral of this freelance example?
Are you obsessed with time passing? Well, you should be!
This is exactly how I ended up one day using a stopwatch on my smartphone outside a gym. If I can use a calorie diary, what's wrong with a private "time calculator" for business purposes? You can rest assured that after a day or two of this new routine, I was ready to admit some unpleasant things to myself. Spending two hours to write a single article or from 10 to 12 hours working daily was nothing more than an excuse to be "flexible." It's definitely not an enjoyable thing to draw borders all over your life between the moment you work for real and don't work also for real. However, that's the only way not to get lost in translation of daily work.
Right now, I will work and will finish what I started with no or at least very few interruptions. Then, I will allow myself a luxury of being distracted as much as I want. The funny thing, though, is that during my university days I was able to do a much quality work with no stopwatch and similar apps. I can thank only the good old pressure for that. You know that you have to prepare for your exam, so you have all motivation in the world packed within your four walls. On the other hand, you know that the great life of parties and love is waiting for you outside. So, it's going to be worth it. All that you have to sacrifice, you're going to "compensate" properly. This Dostoevsky crime/punishment pain/joy sacrifice/reward working routine worked perfectly for me. Some of my friends managed to study every single day considerable less compared to my "red alert" days. Yet, my justification was that those who don't work hard also don't party hard.
The world isn't going to change, you have to change
I think that Ralph Waldo Emerson said something that we should make our world suit us if we didn't like it. Well, it was easy for him to say something like this, because he was a 19th-century brainiac. You want to change the modern world? Good luck with that. If there's the "third way," then I'm all ears to hear about it. Oh, my time's up, my smartphone's stopwatch says this is all what you'll get in this post.
free report reveal 5 powerful steps to better manage your time
The 3 INSANELY Effective Methods To Achieve Your Goals, GO HERE.