The,5-Home,Business,Tug,amp,#3 DIY The 9 to 5-Home Business Tug o' War

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and

Perhaps the scarcest commodity the new home-businessowner just starting out has is time. This is particularlyso if you are also working a traditional, full-time job andbuilding up your business "on the side" in your spare time.This is a situation I am all too familiar with. I stillwork a full-time 8:30 - 5:00 job while building my owninternet-based business in my spare time. So how do yougo about burning the candle at both ends without burningyourself out in the process?First off, let's think about priorities. Working a full-time job while developing a business requires stamina andendurance if other areas of your life are not to beneglected. This means being fit and healthy. Make time toexercise at least three times a week. Four or five isbetter. I know how hard it can be to commit an hour toworking out when you've got an endless (and I mean ENDLESS!)list of things you need to be doing NOW for your business.But make the time. It pays BIG dividends in terms of staminaand endurance. For me, this means getting up at 4:00 am onworkout days. If that's what it takes for you, do it!Second, eat right. Don't just grab a McBurger on the wayhome from work and scoff it down as you're driving. Takethe time to cook a proper meal and relax for a half houror an hour before getting down to business. This gives youa break and time to unwind from the pressures of the day,making you much more productive when you do get down towork. Eating proper meals will keep you in good health and,coupled with a regular exercise routine, will help keepyour energy levels high.OK, so you're physically in shape and taking care ofyourself. The next major thing to think about is timemanagement. Every weekend, before the working week starts,prepare a business plan for the coming week. This isnothing more complicated that writing down the variousbusiness-related activities you must do over the course ofthe coming week and then scheduling them according to how muchtime you know you are going to have on a particular day. Byplanning out your time this way, you can schedule yourbusiness activities alongside your other activities. Takecare of as many of them as you can through the course of theday. Whether you are able to do this depends on the natureof your 9 to 5 job but if you have even a little autonomy youshould be able to squeeze out a little time here and there.Not huge chunks, just 10 minutes here and there.The nature of your job may mean you don't have the luxuryof that sort of autonomy. If this is you, then there'snothing for it but to free up time before and after work.This may mean getting up an hour earlier every day, for example.Whatever your personal situation, by planning ahead you willat least have the peace of mind of knowing that time hasbeen allocated to all important business-related tasks.By eliminating the "scatter gun" approach you will find thatthe limited time you do have will be much more productive.There are going to be some activities that you have to doday in, day out. Decide what time of the day is best foryou to attend to these routine tasks. The more you canintegrate business activities into your daily routine themore efficient will be your use of time. Let's take email,for example. Anyone running an online business has to dealwith email on a daily basis. I use the time between when Iget up in the morning and when I start my workout for this.It gives me time to wake up before I launch into physicalactivity and it is a relatively undemanding task that doesnot require precision concentration.Make use of autoresponders for as much of your emailprocessing as possible. This will further reduce the amountof time you have to spend on this aspect of your business.Other routine activities include things like site promotionand search engine position monitoring. Now there are a lotof great tools to help webmasters with this part of theirbusiness. For example, WebPosition Gold will automaticallyreview your position in all the major search engines andreport back to you with the results. It can also beprogrammed to auto-submit at appropriate intervals. Be sureto use quality automated tools wherever possible. They cansave you literally hours of work every week and as we allknow, time is money in this business.Keep a journal for a week. Record in it everything you doduring the day from the moment you get up in the morningto the moment you go to bed. What activities can youeliminate in favour of freeing up some time for yourbusiness? Maybe it means getting up an hour earlier.Maybe it's forgoing the sleep-in on the weekend. Maybe itmeans giving up those two hours of TV every night. You willfind even 15-20 minutes blocks here and there can add up to asizeable chunk of time over a week or a month.If you travel, keep a copy of your website on your laptopand work on it while you're in the air or waiting for aflight. Or answer your email ready to send it when you getplugged in again.As you can see, the trick is to practice the "nibble"technique. If you wait until you have a great chunk of timein one block, such as the weekend, you'll only waste all ofthose little bits of time you could have put to good useduring the week and fritter away your "quality" time onroutine tasks rather than business development.One final piece of advice. Take time every week to justrelax and do something you want to do. Although thepressures of a new business are demanding, failing to taketime out will only lead to burn out.