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Help! There Are Not Enough Hours in the Day

Written by: Kris De Leon

Article Overview: How many times do you hear yourself say, “I wish I had more hours in the day,” or “I don’t have enough time.” When you include sleep, can you honestly say that you’ve had a productive day and maximized all 1440 minutes allotted? Perhaps a quick glance at the evening news might turn into an hour. Maybe you planned on checking out one website, but find an interesting link and click on it, and then you continue clicking more links. Soon enough, you spent nearly two hours checking out travel deals and reading all the gossip news, and haven’t accomplished anything. Where did all the minutes go?

Help! There Are Not Enough Hours in the Day

How many times do you hear yourself say, “I wish I had more hours in the day,” or “I don’t have enough time.” When you include sleep, can you honestly say that you’ve had a productive day and maximized all 1440 minutes allotted? Perhaps a quick glance at the evening news might turn into an hour. Maybe you planned on checking out one website, but find an interesting link and click on it, and then you continue clicking more links. Soon enough, you spent nearly two hours checking out travel deals and reading all the gossip news, and haven’t accomplished anything. Where did all the minutes go?

We all have busy lives, and many of us are juggling full time jobs, network marketing, and raising a family. No wonder why we stress about not having enough hours. However, if you are to achieve that dream of time and financial freedom, you must find a way to increase productivity. Time is precious, and you must focus on income producing activities. These activities should include prospecting, follow-ups, and building new relationships with future prospects.

So how do I ensure that I have enough time in the day to focus only on income producing activities? The best way is to first identify what main goals or results that are income producing, which are specific and measurable, you want to achieve in the day. For example, today, you want to speak to 3 prospects, connect with 25 people on Facebook, follow-up with 5 people, and write one article. This may sound like a lot of work and have no time to do it, especially when you factor in a full time job and raising a family.

The best thing is to identify what hours in the day you have to complete these activities. If you have a typical 9-5 job, your available times include lunch and evening hours after 6pm, if you factor in the commute home from work. The next step is to break down your income producing activities into one hour time slots. Using the example of goals and results mentioned above, here is a sample schedule:

7-8am Commute to Office

8-9am Catch-up on e-mail, breakfast, coffee, etc

9-1pm Regular work hours

1-2pm Lunch (this is a great time to speak to 3 prospects. Should take about 10 minutes each)

2-5pm Regular work hours

5-6pm Commute home / dinner

6-7pm Facebook activity – connect with 25 people

Follow-up calls to 5 people

7-8pm Draft article

8-9pm Break / time with the family

9-10m Edit Article

10-11pm Plan for next day

Try setting aside time at night to plan out your next day. Stick to a strict schedule over the next few weeks until it becomes routine. By being disciplined and sticking to the schedule, you will increase your productivity and reduce the chances of wasting time, like surfing the Internet for hours, or watching TV. This will put you one step closer towards achieving financial and time freedom.

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Article Tags: entrepreneur, network marketing, productivity, time management
Referred by: http://www.AndyAcci.com



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Profile: Julia Cameron: journalist, screenwriter, poet, nove - Julia Cameron will be one of our featured speakers at the Ladies Who Launch NYC Speaker Series taking place on April 28. Click for more info. Julia Cameron is an accomplished journalist, screenwriter, poet, novelist, and playwright. But mention her name in conversation and inevitably it will be linked with The Artist's Way, a workbook for those looking to discover or re-discover their creative selves, which was initially published in 1992 and has sold over 3 million copies. Cameron grew up in Chicago and began her career writing for the Washington Post and Rolling Stone (where she met director Martin Scorsese, whom she married in 1975 and later divorced). While married to Scorsese, she worked on the screenplays for two of his major films: Taxi Driver and New York, New York. Cameron's first musical, Avalon, was staged in 1998. At 60, Cameron continues to follow the advice she espouses in The Artist's Way: jotting down her thoughts daily in her "morning pages" and channeling her artistic vision into a variety of projects. Below, read how Cameron fends off writer's block (yes, even she suffers from it sometimes), calls on friends for guidance, and dispels the myth that writers need to be miserable to be good. what we learned from julia: "If you're good at doing one thing, you should keep doing it. In England, writers are novelists, playwrights—the word 'writer' covers a wider spectrum of activity." She also said to take a bet on yourself; she did, and it's paid off. her true calling "I was born to write. All my brothers and sisters—there are seven of us altogether—are in the arts. My father was in advertising and mom had a master's degree in English and wrote poetry. By the time I was in sixth grade with Mrs. Klopsch, I was already writing short stories and poems." investigating journalism "My goal was to write short stories. When I was offered a job at the Washington Post, it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone. I enjoy writing in any form. I was proud of my Rolling Stone pieces. I wrote one about E. Howard Hunt's children. I remember getting in trouble with William F. Buckley. He called my house in Chicago because he thought it was a terrible thing I'd interviewed the children—he was their godfather. My first taste of celebrity was getting a good scolding. During my 20s I was a blind beginner. In my 30s I was a lot more conscious about what I wrote." screenwriting savvy "My early screenwriting was for my husband at the time, Martin Scorsese. I worked on Taxi Driver and on New York, New York. When Marty and I got divorced, I had a screenwriting career to pursue. I sold movies to Paramount. They bought the movie but didn't make it. I was frustrated, so I took the money I earned writing for Miami Vice and made a feature film in Chicago." sobering experience "1978 is the year that I got sober. My wild ways came screeching to a halt. I needed to find a way to write sober. I had always associated writing with drinking. We have a mythology around creativity that's destructive. We think you have to be broke, alone, neurotic, addicted. None of these things is true. When I got sober, I had to find a way to work soberly. I was 29, and I had a daughter who was a year old." do it for love, not money "I've never had to be paid to write. I published two novels. I have a musical opening in Chicago in the fall. Last year I had a play in L.A. The trick is to not need a guarantee and to be willing to write no matter what. Right now I'm writing a sequel to [my novel] Mozart's Ghost, which came out on Valentine's Day. I did the novel without a contract. I bet on myself." the power of friendship "It helps if you have friends who believe in you. My friends read my first drafts. A lot of times they will believe in a project when I'm getting rejected. We underestimate the importance of having one strong friend. The telephone is a wonderful ally to combat the isolation of being a writer, as is e-mail. If you know what your friends are doing, it's harder to feel lonely. I also think writing is its own companion. You're not lonely when you're actually writing." a typical day, the artist's way "I get up late. If I can, it's noon. I write my morning pages first thing. I ask for guidance and sit quietly and see if there's anything I need to be doing. I usually work on the music [for my upcoming musical]. I have a collaborator, Emma Lively, and we've written three musicals together. We work for a few hours. Then I put in a couple hours of prose writing. I sometimes don't get out of the house until 5:30. I try to get a walk in every day." overcoming writer's block "I use the same unblocking tools that I teach my students. They make you much more alert to the signals. I grapple with writer's block right away. Morning pages [three pages of writing about anything that comes to your head] are one such tool. I've been writing them for 25 years. In The Artist's Way, I also write about "blasting through blocks." By listing any angers, fears, and resentments related to a project, that often clears the decks right away. Emma and I have been hired to write music for a one-woman show. I feel blocked around it. I take a look at my ego—I'm not used to working FOR people anymore. I need to be a beginner again. Hopefully once I surrender my need to be the boss, it'll work out." favorite books "Tim Farrington is my favorite writer. He's written two books—The Monk Downstairs and The Monk Upstairs. He's so funny and deft, and he was the inspiration for me to write Mozart's Ghost. I dedicated the book to him." daily must-reads "I read a little teeny book called Twenty-Four Hours a Day that was put out by Hazelden. It's a meditation book. I also read Creative Ideas by theologian Ernest Holmes, which was originally published in 1934. They just re-released it, and I wrote the intro. Right now I'm reading My First Five Husbands by Rue McClanahan and Drinking: A Love Story, a memoir by Caroline Knapp." most rewarding career moment "I think I'm sort of singular in that I like book tours. I meet people who say I used your tools and they changed my life and this is what I did with them." scariest career moment "Watching my first musical go up in 1998. It's scary. I just heard the music so beautifully in my head that it was hard to deal with some of the compromises of getting it on the stage. I was sitting in the back of the theater saying, 'It's brilliant. It's awful." on networking "I think it's most important that we do the work and then have something to network about. Sometimes people want networking to be a shortcut or a guarantee. Networking gives you a sense of the possible. I have a number of women friends in their 70s and 80s and they are a tremendous source of inspiration. One runs a horse ranch. One got a master's in poetry at 75. One is in her 80s and is still an active actress. I believe that other women are inspirational." parting thoughts... -"I am happiest when ... I'm writing." -"Success to me means ... creativity." -"The public figure I wish most would read The Artist's Way is ... Warren Beatty. I don't know if he has." -"I will always think of myself as ... a good horseback rider." -"My business would not have happened if ... I waited for guarantees." -"The most important thing I do every day is ... stay sober. I have 30 years without a drink." This Featured Lady was profiled by Michele Shapiro, a writer living in New York City.


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