Eating A Frog Everyday

Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live XXX first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”..

First, do one thing at a time. For years, I struggled to make enough money because I had too many enterprises. You can not leave 4 or 5 items incomplete. I know it is hard to conceive about your job that way, and you see folks who claim they work on one item at a time and think, “Right.” Always several things.” No. Single-task. It is difficult, and I know you have many fantastic ideas, but you do not always apply them.

You utilize maybe 5% of your excellent ideas, and there is a difference between having good ideas and using them. Everyone has wonderful ideas, but recognize your limits. Dismiss sparkles. Ignore great ideas that stink the following day. If you have an idea, let it rest. If you get an excellent thought, write it down and complete what you are doing.

You have a brilliant idea, it may be a spark, it may be amazing now, but a week from now you will think, “Wow, that is the worst thing I have ever heard,” or 20 other people may have beaten you to it. Unsure. Many of your ideas will be wasted, so disregard those you do not have time for.

Once you have set your timetable so you are not working on 2 or 3 projects at once, try the 60-second rule. A lot of lost time comes from not being able to make choices, and that failure comes from being fearful. You are not sure what your product requires, what you should write about, or if you should launch a product now or wait till you have more material. Give yourself 60 seconds to decide, then stick to it. This assures progress. Countdown clocks may help. If you need a countdown clock to make a choice, utilize a stopwatch or your phone’s stopwatch.

This is not only for business. You can apply this to anything, so if you are struggling to determine where to eat, set a timer for 60 seconds and decide. In 60 seconds, you will make your best selection.

Produce 60 seconds your time constraint for determining what to write today, what blog or forum posts to make, or what next product to work on.

If you need to know what things to perform today, allow yourself 60 seconds to compose a task list. Whatever you have at the end, even if it is bad, is what you are stuck with. You may not be trained for the 60-second rule, but you will be over time. You must be able to make rapid judgments in 60 seconds or less to be autonomous, self-motivated, and an effective company owner. Using the 60-second rule will get you there.

After that, do something every day. Every time I think about what I need to do to stay motivated, I think about this guy who — he does not work a day job, I do not think he is worked one in 5 or 10 years, he is self-employed, but just barely, and he is always barely scraping by because he will take on one big project in a month and he will work diligently on that and make software or an e-book or a website for somebody else,

Many businesses and online marketers say you can get by with an hour of effort a week. No. You may need to put in more time than usual at first. To accomplish it, I save scraps. I save 20 or 30 minutes on weekends, after work, in the morning, and over lunch to get additional work done. You must do something every day to bring your company ahead, even if it is responding customer care e-mails or writing one more chapter on the weekend when you would normally rest. Everyday, do something.

I learned this while I was doing software development since there is a lot of momentum, so it is simple to keep going but hard to start off again. Like driving a tractor-trailer. Once you are moving fast, it is simple to maintain going quickly, but beginning slowly is difficult.

So do something every day, even for 5 minutes on the weekend. If you prefer to take weekends off, spend 5 minutes on Saturday writing a small chapter of your next book or article, then allow yourself another 5 minutes on Sunday. Daily action has a big influence.

Regularly. Instead of working two or four days straight, work from 1 to 5 p.m.

You can ask, “What is the purpose of 9-to-5 online business owners?” Why should self-employed people labor 9 to 5? I thought quitting 9-to-5 employment meant working whenever you want. Actually, you are compensated for your labor. Instead of a flat pay, you are paid dependent on how many new clients you bring in or how well your newest product sells. So self-employment is twice as productive as working for someone else.

You are not only wasting time, thus you may require a timetable. Because you can not work 24/7, you may require specific hours every day. You can not work 24/7.

Moreover? Businesses have established work hours because it works. Because you educate your brain to have the light switch on for working and then off when you are done. You clear your thoughts, do not accept phone calls or e-mails, and do your thing to recharge for the following day. You may have to work 9 to 5, but it is on your own time. Focus on what you want. You are not told what to do, and you are operating your own engine and producing your own money, not someone else’s.

Get a companion after you have regular hours. An accountability partner might be a business partner or someone in the same specialty. Someone you do not know in your day-to-day existence, like a mentor or someone who understands what you are doing; because let us face it, your wife, girlfriend, or family do not comprehend your self-employed self because they think they have to work for someone else.

So many of us feel lonely every day since we are either at our workplace or surrounded by individuals we can not speak to. These folks will grow bored if you speak about marketing.

So many times I go to internet marketing seminars and people want to talk marketing, so they will sit in on marketing sessions for six hours a day, someone else talking, and then during their breaks they will be talking marketing and in the evening they will still be talking marketing, and that is because they are lonely.

So obtain an accountability partner to avoid day-to-day loneliness, and when you go to internet marketing seminars to relax, you may discuss business but clear your thoughts when it is time to party. Find someone to contact every day to keep you motivated, and perhaps they will utilize you to do the same so you do not have to pay a coach.

You contact someone every day to give them your to-do list, and it is tempting to become friendly and chatter for an hour or two. Nope. Business only. Tell someone your daily to-do list. What 3 or 4 things would you do if you had the ideal day? Small aims only. So, “Write this product’s sales letter.” Write the next two chapters.” The more you build a to-do list, the more you will know what to schedule. I usually add one additional item to my to-do list, so if I have 5 things, I get 4 done, and the 5th is because you slow down when you hit a wall. So I focus on the first four things, knowing I will not get to number 5 unless I have an extremely productive day and do the first four.

You prioritize your to-do list. Because you do not want to be the person who reports getting 4 things done halfway. Or you didn’t. You want to get as much as possible off your list and at least one item. I have never done nothing on my to-do list. I always finished at least one item so I could forget it.

So, among those 3 or 4 items, stress the top one. I prefer to state 1) first task, 2) second task, 3) third task, therefore task 1 is my priority and the tasks are listed from most to least important. So highlight the number 1 priority since you will want to do at least 1 item and report back to that person; highly critical.

If you are too bashful to call or want to document it better, write him an e-mail. At the beginning of the day, send your accountability partner an e-mail, then have him respond with his to-do list and give him yours. At the conclusion of the day, reply to the same e-mail and tell him what you accomplished and what you didn’t.

Alternatively, do both. Do the phone list, chat to him on the phone with your to-do list, and then re-type it in an e-mail so it is obvious what you accomplish and what you did not do. If you have Gmail, you can archive those e-mails and look at what you get done every day. Once I write down what I have done in a day, I am shocked at how much I can do.

This tool does not enhance my productivity, but on days when I would not get much done, it maintains my production level steady since I would feel horrible if I can not get everything done and let my accountability partner down. Call someone every day, give them your to-do list, and tell them what you finished. DIY will not work. You are letting someone down if you do not complete what you have promised. Get an accountability buddy to avoid letting yourself down.

Then eat a frog every day. This is your top to-do. You will want to perform the number one job on your to-do list first, even if you do not want to. Before checking e-mail, phone messages, the TV, or taking a break, complete the first job.

You have been putting off turning one of your goods into a video, so what is your top priority now that you were meant to accomplish it a month ago? Before working on your next product, posting on forums, promoting, or answering customer support emails, do this. So do it first. If it helps, inform your accountability partner that you will accomplish that one job first before doing anything else. Brian Tracy calls this “eating a frog every day.” It ensures daily progress.

Create a system. Nothing more to say, so I left this line blank. You solve problems. If you write better in 5 or 7 batches, do so. If you are proficient at recording Camtasia PowerPoints, consider selling them. Create a system by repeating what works.

Any excellent time management or self-help guru understands the 80/20 principle. 20% of the labor produces 80% of the outcomes. You may realize that you only work 20% of your workweek, so you outsource the rest and observe behaviors. Maybe you waste an hour a day. You spend an hour a day reading forums or gossip, so maybe you should work instead. So stop early or start late and promise not to browse the web. Sprints are essential. You work fast, not slowly.

I am referring to Parkinson’s Law. Your work grows to occupy your time. If you claim, “I just want to write one article” and it takes you 30 minutes, you will spend 8 hours writing that one piece. You will have both morning and afternoon to work on it, and by lunchtime you will have written half the piece. That is sad. Four hours’ effort should have taken 30 minutes. You are halfway done after four hours. You claim, “I have written half the piece this morning and will complete the other half this afternoon,” and it takes you all day to write one.

Work in 30- or 60-minute segments instead. If the article takes 30 minutes, say, “Okay, it is 8 of the clock and by 8:30 I will have it completed.” You will feel panicked and like you are killing yourself, but it is only momentary. After you make this a habit, you will be able to write 30-, 60-, and 7-minute pieces.

Hourly objectives are fun. My productivity has increased. I say, “Okay, 9 a.m. I will blog about it. 00:00 I will empty my customer service mailbox. By 11 a.m., I will have sent three joint venture offers, etc. Mini-days provide you more time. You declare you will spend two hours writing articles today, thus you will do nothing else for that two hours.

It is like a day. You act like you are quitting work at the end of two hours, but you will keep doing other things. So you squeeze many days into one 24 hour period, or if you are manufacturing a product that takes 4 hours, you perform a reverse mini day and spend 4 hours on it instead of 2. It is a reverse mini day since it is a half day. Not mini.

Milestone 9: Less is more. I realized I watched so much TV. Average daily TV time is three hours. There is nothing wrong with movies, DVDs, or relaxing, but if you spend too much time watching TV, cut it out. Set TV-viewing hours, maybe. TiVo, DVR, on-demand, and Netflix viewing instantaneously remove the need to watch TV live. You may watch TV later and avoid ads to gain 15 minutes each hour. If you are an obsessive TV viewer, try avoiding TV for one month. If you have favorite programs, record them and watch them on the weekend. I tried this and ended up working all week and avoiding TV, then watching on weekends.

If you are cheating on your wife or covering up a crime, it will destroy your creativity since your brain will be so focused on it. Therefore, simplify. Get rid of a depressing pal. If you dislike your work and it is harming you, seek a new one.

First, get rid of your extensive to-do lists. I know men with extensive whiteboard to-do lists. Five-page to-do lists. Never mind. If you can not reduce your list to three items, check things off. Cross off the least essential item, then the next least important, etc., until you have a few items to worry about. Reduce desktop clutter, documents on your desk, and room clutter. Wash not work in a pigsty; clean your home, do the dishes, and the laundry. Set credit card, mortgage, utility, web hosting, and other payments to auto-pay. Automatically pay. Set up direct deposit for your paychecks so you do not have to pick them up. Whether you get affiliate payments from ClickBank, find out if they may transfer the money directly into your checking account to save you a trip to the bank. Eliminate it.

If possible, avoid phone calls. If you do not make many phone sales, use e-mail. Because e-mail lets you check up a conversation’s history, postpone communications, and react immediately. It takes 10 seconds to react to an e-mail, but a phone discussion may take 5 or 10 minutes.

Do not jog. Sprint. Overdrive is great for your brain. You do not want to write all day. You want to write in one hour. When evil people would steal a bank and flee on horseback, they would ride full speed for an hour, then get off the horse and walk it for another hour, and so on. And so would the sheriff or law enforcement hunting bank thieves. They would ride the horse for an hour, then walk it for an hour since it allowed it to go the furthest on average. If the bank thieves rode the horse for three hours, the horse would weary and law enforcement would catch up. Or if they walked the horse for five hours, police enforcement would catch up.

You will have days when you are incredibly driven and days when you are not. Unpredictable. I used to imagine I would be creative, driven, and unmotivated at different times of the month, but that was not true. You will experience highs and lows. It is better to mass-produce one day than every day.

If you have a blog and a lot of ideas, create a series of short blog entries and schedule them to publish a week, two weeks, and three weeks from now. Even if you are in a writing slump for the next three weeks, you will still receive blog postings.

Emails are similar. Schedule autoresponder emails. If you want to hype up your list and pre-sell and pre-educate them for your upcoming project launch, create the emails in advance and schedule them to send every day. Even if you are not in the mood later, which you probably will not be, the emails will go out. Give yourself deadlines for everything, like the hourly deadline and breaking up your workday. Get an egg timer, your mobile phone alarm, or your desktop-based Cool Timer software and set a 33-minute time restriction.

Downtime. Avoid overwork. If you labor diligently, you will become weary of it. Marketing will annoy you. You will lose marketing. I stated I would put in 5 or 10 minutes on the weekend to keep things running, but I will not work all week, all weekend, on holidays, morning, night. Yes. I would tire easily. I get exhausted sometimes. It occurs that I overwork myself.

Exercising after work may help. So many people work all day, go to sleep, then get up to work again, and they feel like garbage. You need to exercise to release neurotransmitters and endorphins, move about to feel better, and stir up true sensations instead of being a robot. It also clears your thoughts. You get into the flow instead of worrying about list building, graphics, and freelance. You are considering jogging, weightlifting, and swimming. I do not know what you do for exercise, but exercise after work to clear your thoughts and switch off your marketing brain so you can mingle with your pals.

Knowing when to turn off the switch will save you from hanging around in off-topic forums where lonely individuals spend hours re-posting news stories, chatting to one other, and socializing in the incorrect manner. Who wants strangers?

Talk and listen less. Reduce both. Watching the news every day will depress you. They will tell you about the recession, falling real estate, the guy who slaughtered his family because he could not pay the mortgage, or whatever political or commercial scandal is happening. What? If you watch too much news TV and read too many newspapers, you will get depressed and unmotivated.

Listen less, read less e-books, forums, and news articles, and concentrate on work. That includes phone calls. If your business partner or someone else often calls or e-mails you, learn to say no or you will squander your time. Text chat, AIM, Google Talk, and MSN messenger are time wasters. You may chat to someone all day without realizing it.

If you can, check e-mail once a day and not on weekends. When you notice a message, respond straight away so customer service problems do not pile up. Do not read an e-mail and then return to it later. You read an e-mail, reply quickly, and move on.

Do not let email control you. I was terrible at email. Always had 400 unread mails. People would become angry when I did not respond to them or forgot about them. I use Gmail because people always react to my messages. It turns emails into one chat. Instead of 500 e-mails, you have 100 discussions.

So thinking of e-mails as discussions is beneficial, and if you settle a problem, you either archive it and move it out of the inbox or delete it and put it in the trash. Your inbox should not include weeks-old or years-old emails. A thousand-message inbox is excessive. Archived. Inbox should only include outstanding problems. If you have five messages in your inbox, it suggests you have five jobs to perform today. Unsure. Your inbox should only include outstanding problems, and you should react to them immediately. One person emailed me and remarked, “Wow, I assumed it was an autoresponder since it was so rapid.” Many of your support and sales difficulties will be straightforward queries, so you should answer them immediately.

Think in articles. I know it is hard when you have writer’s block and can not think of what to write, and it is much worse when you have too many ideas and write them on paper and in documents.

You should write about every thought. Example: My sister and her husband were shopping for a new automobile a few months ago. They performed the normal online research, including Kelley Blue Book values, but it does not necessarily tell you everything. Many individuals browse on the internet, then go to a dealership, test drive, and buy a vehicle.

They initially rented an automobile and test-drove it. My sister’s favorite vehicle was a Mazda 6, so they hired one for a week to check out the mirrors, how smoothly it ran, and how the seat felt. You can do all that on a test drive, but you only have 10 or 20 minutes. If you hire a vehicle and drive it around, you will notice things you would not otherwise. If you owned a blog or were selling a product on how to purchase a vehicle, a great post might read, “Here’s a tip for purchasing a car: Before buying a vehicle from a dealership, rent it for a week first. You finish the piece by directing readers to this site for further car-buying advice.

Everybody writes. Rather of writing, record audio. Everyone can talk to someone. You could express this notion to someone in two to three minutes. Two to three minutes of speaking is an article or two, therefore you must communicate more in less words. Articles should have one main theme and three subpoints. You learn to say more with less. You can provide an article’s worth of material in a minute or two, whereas most others take an hour. So you can express more with less words, so your words have more effect and they do not tune you out.

Write personal objectives. Write five things you desire in a year in the present tense. First, I possess a sports automobile; second, I earn $10,000/month. Writing out your objectives helps you recognize what you want, since many individuals believe they know but don’t. They desire money, leisure time, happiness, or property, but are unsure.

If you write down your objectives, you will know where you are headed. Positive objectives are needed. Not “I will be debt-free.” It can not be “I will be jobless.” You should mention how you will be out of debt, such earning $10,000 a month. You will be done with your employment, maybe with 10 goods or a membership site that replaces your revenue.

You need positive objectives phrased in the present tense so you may see yourself now achieving them, rather than gazing far into the future. You set a one-year objective because it is far enough away that you will not alter your mind by then, but not so near that it is a to-do list. Your dreams? Emotional aims If you want to make them ridiculous or unrealistic, do it. Many successful individuals, like Bill Clinton, write down their objectives more than they anticipate. Even if you miss your target, you have done a lot. So maybe you want to earn $10,000 each month and will make $5,000 in a year. Well, it is a failure, but maybe it is a significant improvement for you.

So write down your objectives and figure out what you need to do today to make a tiny step in that direction, what you need to do tomorrow to make another step, etc., and you simply make these small steps going closer to your goals. Maybe you will produce three articles or purchase PPC ads today to reach your target. I do not know, but think about what you need to take a modest move in that direction.

Mind states are Milestone 16. Imagine yourself in a state you enjoy, then transform it into the desired state. Imagine being confident about something, like the sun rising tomorrow. Consider what you do as the sun rises. So you may envision the sun, what it sounds like, so maybe you hear the birds singing in the morning and that is the sound you always hear; you always hear the vehicle going by in the morning; you smell the morning dew; you feel the sun’s warmth; or you see yourself standing beneath the sun. Think on what you see, hear, smell, and feel every day, and you will see and hear those things.

Imagine working. Imagine writing sales copy, doing graphics, programming, etc. What do you see? Are you in the picture when you envision yourself working? Is it top left? Any sounds or odors? Feeling? Picture? Size? Depth? Border? Color? Luminous? Dark? You change whatever it is. So maybe lower the picture. Possibly expand it. Your view of product creation becomes certainty.

If you want to learn more, visit threemindstates.com for video tutorials on how to use this technique. This will help you visualize what you need to do consistently while generating goods, films, etc. Then you envision something you do every day and combine it into that, so you are in the mentality of doing it every day.

Finally, learn to be cheerful. Emotion drives action. So if you are a writer who wants to complete novels, not just start them, you should conceive of a book, write it, finish it like a lunatic, and then grin. Reward yourself with a luxury supper or a new coffee table when you are done. Reward yourself, but do not cheat. When the book is 90% done, do not purchase the coffee table. Finish it.

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