Consistency and Focus: Essential to Entrepreneurs

As I start out my Sunday morning I'm going to initiate a new routine. Usually the drill is, I eat breakfast and then I sit down to at least two hours of mind-numbing emails before I accomplish anything useful.

Then I'll pay bills or put away files I got out the day before.

Then after lunch I get a couple hours of something useful done, and then I go do the errands like going to the bank, the post office and the library late in the afternoon.

I'll spend part of the evening listening to teleconferences, reading, writing, or doing phone calls to line up appointments for my fire safety job before dinner. After dinner I may crash and read or watch TV.

That's my day. When I look at it, there are only two or three productive hours in it one side or the other of the lunch hour, and another couple sometime between 4 and 8 p.m. That's it!

Well, the gurus may be able to cut their real work time to three or four hours a day and make a living. I don't know about you, but I can't!

Here's the newly designed schedule, designed to catch me doing my best work when I am freshest. That would be, right after I've had a good breakfast, so 9 a.m. to about 11:30, and again late afternoon and early evening when I get my second wind.

The new plan is (drum roll, please):

7 a.m.: read for 30 minutes to wake up the mind
7:30 a.m.: walk for 45 minutes (This is in recognition that the brain and the body need the oxygen produced by regular exercise. I am about to use my new diet product EasySlimRX, an African Hoodia based appetite suppessant, and I'll have more energy to burn as I lose weight.)
8:30-8:45: Shower and get dressed
8:45-9:15: Breakfast and newspaper
9:15-11:30: Blog and work on other writing projects; alternatively, highest priority project
11:30-12: Lunch
12-1:30: Emails, check on sales
1:30-3:15: Household chores, paying bills, cleaning, banking, groceries, library and coffee break
3:15-5: Highest priority project; marketing activities
5-6: Calls for fire safety systems in home demos; prepare postcards for safety system marketing; team calls
6-7: Dinner
7-10: Safety system demos, more safety system calling, teleconferences, emails, reading or TV

Now, every entrepreneur's schedule will look different. This one reflects some of the unique things I do, such as demonstrating fire safety equipment to families in the after dinner hours. It also takes advantage of my higher productivity periods for writing projects and other high priority activities, such as marketing.

Instead of frittering two or three hours at a time on email I'm putting it at a time that is normally less productive for me, the time right after lunch when I feel like curling up for a nap half the time. It will be limited to no more than 1 1/2 hours per day, at least during the more productive daytime hours. If I need more time, it can take place in the evening when I'm doing something else, such as listening to a teleconference or watching TV. I'm moving up my errand time to earlier in the afternoon. Normally there is less traffic and shorter lines at the bank, the post office or the grocery store before 3. If I stop for coffee I can get it done before the after school crowds come in. I'll be back home and productive again before the moms have picked up the little ones from the elementary schools on either side of our neighborhood.

This plan leaves time for me to concentrate on my marketing for my other job at a time when folks are normally home, before and after the dinner hour. Some evenings I'll be out giving demos, while others I can either concentrate on my education with teleconferences, team calls and info product reading, or I can occasionally afford to chill out with a good mystery or a mindless TV show.

My new plan also intentionally adds exercise to my day, a very necessary thing given my need to lose about 75 lbs. One of my intentions is to start a blog that will cover the weight loss story. I'll share the URL when I get it set up.