IMers, what do we do daily to focus and say on track, (butcher my excel spreadsheet)

I downloaded it, why do you feel that you should give your self an estimated time? Even if you estimate it, your going to try stick to that and not got over it and you might rush some work. What I would do - List down your daily tasks and simple, you stop once they are done, so that could be 3pm or 11pm. That way you aint rushing and trying to stick to a time frame. Just my 2 cents.

The reason why estimate time for tasks and stuff and but work into blocks and chunks is because when I start the day with indefinite tasks and indefinite time in which to do them, I end up getting half of one of them done.

I think it's just the way that I work or something.

What I have to do is estimate the time (either 15 minutes or 45 minutes) then start a digital timer when I am beginning that task. It helps me actually start DOING SOMETHING. haha.

BTW, if I estimate that a task will take LONGER than 45 minutes, I have to split it up. I never want to focus on any one thing longer than 45 minutes.

Just me.

Butters, what plan do you follow daily, or semi-daily?

Hi cdmiller87,

Thanks for sharing.

I plan my tasks but not in such an exact way. I tend to focus on results rather than activities, so for example I may have as a task 'complete new website' or 'upload new videos' and I just do them when I feel like it and work until things are done.

I've tried having very controlled time schedules in the past and while it worked well when working for other people, now that I work for myself I find using rigid structures makes things feel like a job and I tend to push back against that, so rather than create a situation where I tend to procrastinate - I just focus on a way that gets things done for me.

I do tend to outsource somethings completely - like graphics, so if a task requires graphics I don't really spend much time on it at all.

The other thing I do is group like activities and do them all together, so (for example) if I've just created some new videos and written some articles - I'll do a 'distribution' afternoon where I just plug them into the relevant software/service to get them out there. Sometimes video uploads tend to hog the computers and bandwidth, so I may put them off until an evening when I can just let them go.

I have certain tasks that I do on particular days - like running stats reports - I do that on Wednesdays because some of my offline clients have weekly meetings on Thursdays so I generate all of the stats on their improved web positions, traffic levels, linking activities etc. and create reports/presentations on Wednesday for that reason.

So, I tend to have a floating schedule which revolves around commitments I've made to offline clients and coaching clients, everything else is done around a weekly plan.

It's interesting to see how different people do things differently.

Andy

Soemone nerdier than me. Wow.

I have been looking for a spreadsheet kind of method for working my time more wisely and focussing on what matters as well. Here is how I have been looking at things lately.

Late Cycle buying keywords - i use the seo book Rank Checker and put all the keywords I want to track and then on a master spreadsheet i have a little process that I will drop the latest results in to track how well my backlinking/article marketing is doing to move me up the Google Rankings

Niche reserach - I am really random with this and I have been using Micro Niche Finder (97 bucks) to pick keywords or markets to go after. since is saves all my searches I can go back to an old search and see how well a keyword does for searches and competition

Tasks - I have been floating with this using Google Tasks, Outlook tasks, and even Remember the Milk website but I alsways go back to an idea book that is the kind kids have for school. I will just flip through all of my old ideas and go "aha thats what I should work on" not a good method but it seems to work.

I have been searching around a lot lately because I am working more spontaneously then with a plan in mind and a process. and we all know how easy it is to find the next shiny thing.

So this is my priority lately: narrow down to four niches, find good products, focus on keywords reasearch to find late buying keywords with low competition, write blog posts backed up with articles for the ezine articles and go articles for backlinks. So I am hoping that with this and social networking I can gain quite a few backlinks for each keyword term.

Seems to be be working although I keep losing concentration

PErsonally I think overkill.

I keep passwords / ideas all on GDocs.
I have a small to do list 10 items max on my gmail account...

and that's it just do it.

Once you start doing things like that you become a robot, and miss things a human in the real world would, like new opps, slightly different ways of doing it, adhoc problems and wonderous joy of being an "artist".

I would never stick to something like that, as I'm always changing what I need done.

I try to keep it very simple, sort of do things like Andy and base them on results. Normally I only have 5 or less "results" in mind at a time. For example, I will have what results I need for the week, or for a day, and then break that done into tasks. I will work on each task until the result is achieved. Then I move onto the next result I need accomplished, etc.

One "result" I need now is to outsource a particular traffic generation technique. So my tasks for this are: complete instructional documents, complete video instructions, post job, interview providers, etc..While I am working on that, I can also do other tasks for another result, but like I said I try to keep to less than 5 at a time.

Bill