Maybe one or the other knows the situation of lying in bed at night and wondering what you’ve actually been doing all day? The reason you often don’t know where the time actually goes is largely due to a lack of time management.
Because if you don’t define fixed times for certain activities, you jump from task to task, get distracted, and waste a lot of time without really doing anything useful. Small time wasters such as looking at the cell phone, having a coffee, getting something to eat, watching another YouTube video, or making a quick visit to Instagram or betting on slot machines in Uganda add up at the end of the day and often take up significantly more time than expected.
The statement that one has no time for self-employment is, in most cases, only the result of a lack of time management. So the goal is to eliminate or consciously bundle such time wasters, because there is nothing wrong with staying on social media or Netflix. It is only important that you are always aware of your time and activity and do not do anything else in between.
Start an online business
First of all, you should think about what you are currently spending the most time on. For example, if you sleep 8 hours and work 8 hours, you have a total of 8 hours for everything else. That’s a lot, and even if you factor in an hour for the commute and three hours for all meals, there are still 4 hours left. So there is actually enough time.
The best strategy is to always divide your time into blocks the day before. This applies to both a remote job and part-time self-employment. During these blocks, you do nothing but what you have planned to do. This means that at work, all unnecessary tabs on the laptop are closed, the cell phone is in another room, and there are no unplanned breaks for coffee or food in between. However, as soon as the block is finished, you finish the specified activity and take care of the next task with full focus.
If you plan the blocks for the next day, you should also set appropriate to-do’s in order to make the working time as effective as possible. For this, you can use the list with the monthly and weekly goals and their respective deadlines. It happens quite often at the beginning that you overestimate yourself and write down significantly more to-do’s than you can actually do. This is absolutely normal, and you don’t have to feel guilty or unproductive at all if you can’t check off all the to-dos.
Instructions for getting out of the daily grind
Better focus for better results
All of the above issues are related to a lack of focus. You have a big goal in mind and hundreds of ideas, and you want to do everything at once. As a result, overall progress is very slow. That’s why you should concentrate 100% on one thing at the beginning. Those who only want to work remotely have less of a problem. In a company, however, you have many opportunities and ways to realize your own ideas. The brain is constantly bombarded with new inputs from books or videos, and you jump from task to task and from idea to idea.
A very important point is to remain calm. There is a lot of advice and opinions on the internet, but in the end, it’s the things that work that work. And if something proves its worth, then you can still implement it when the time has really come. For example, you don’t need social media and certainly no online shop if you only sell two products on Amazon. If the full focus is on tasks that are really relevant to sales, you will achieve your goals the fastest. At Amazon FBA, that would initially only be product research, sourcing, preparation of offers, and conversion optimization.
Tip: It is relatively easy to check whether a task is really relevant or only seems relevant by asking yourself:
- Am I investing more money than I am getting back?
- Will this move really bring in revenue?
- Does another task possibly bring more sales?
Don’t forget: Working time is also an investment and should be treated like money, for example by setting your own hourly wage.
