Any way you look at it, mistakes are unavoidable in the real world. The only way you can protect yourself against them is by doing nothing. The business world is not any different.

As much as I believe in doing a thorough research of one’s future business conditions before starting (after learning it on my own), I’m also aware of the fact that too much research could hurt. The more research you do, the more you’ll understand that having and running your own home business is not at all milk and honey; that it does involve work; that it does have risks; that you won’t have the level of comfort offered by a regular check; that you’ll absolutely have to learn to manage your money if you don’t want to make some disastrous financial decisions which could jeopardize the future of your business; and the list could go on and on.

The question that comes to mind is when should one stop the research and actually get started?

Since I’ve done the whole thing in the wrong order (gotten started, done a bunch of mistakes and then realized I should do some research) I’m probably not the best person to give any advice on the matter.

However, I’ll venture into saying that using your common sense should prove quite useful. Here’s what I’m talking about (the example might seem a bit far fetched, but if you really think about it, you’ll see it does make sense): every time I think of the dangers of driving, how, no matter how good of a driver you are, no matter how careful you are and how good your reflexes are, you never know when your safety will be endagered by another driver who runs a red light, one who doesn’t stop at a stop sign or one who doesn’t check the mirrors before switching lanes, I feel so frightened that I’m just a step away from never getting into a car again. It would be quite bad for me since my present job involves a lot of driving. Soon after such distructive thoughts I try to calm down and make myself understand they are risks involved by my job which I have to take if I want to keep it. They are also risks involved by our present life style which if I didn’t take would drastically reduce my mobility and capacity of moving around.

If I were to make a parallel between my example and a home business, no matter how scared you get about making certain mistakes, about the possibility of not succeeding, you need to calm down. You need to understand that any kind of entrepreneurial endeavours involves risks and mistakes. If you want to get somewhere, you’ll need to accept them. You’ll need to face your fears and just do it.

Getting back to the question I mentioned before, I think that the best moment to stop the research and actually get started would be the moment when the research becomes a distructive process. When you start getting scared of what’s ahead of you. When you start doubting you could actually do this.

When all of this happens it’s time you forget about research for a while and get your hands dirty. Take the first step. Start applying what you’ve learned so far. You’ll soon realize that things are not as bad as they may have seemed.

Keep in mind, though, that no matter how much you’ve learned so far it’s impossible to not make mistakes. What I do that makes me feel comfortable with mistakes is that I look at them as lessons for the future. And, to be honest with you, many times they are my best teachers.

Starting point for this post is “Green Day Give The Best Advice on Blogging” from AlleNation.

So here we go:

1). I blog to keep myself motivated
As I mentioned before, CosminPTR.com was not a blog from the very beginning. It was a regular web site meant to bring the work at home entrepreneurs articles, tools and resources for running their business. It didn’t have any success. One of the reasons is that I had a hard time at working on it on a regular basis. So I decided to look around for something that would somehow make me stay on the right course on a regular basis. I’ve been aware of the blogosphere for about one and a half, two years and I’ve been following a couple of blogs. Seeing the kind of results they have had in such a short period of time made me analyze the reasons for their success. And I realized something (whether this is the case for those blogs or not): writing for (even just) a couple of people who keep coming back to my blog interested in what else I have to say, is one way of keeping myself motivated to stay on track. Even if sometimes I don’t have the time to post as often as I wish. Even if sometimes I ask myself whether I should quit or not. As I said, knowing that my few readers keep coming back for my opinion on certain matters, makes me continue. I feel obligated towards them to continue. To not let them down. And I already thank you guys for that.

2). I have something to say.
Whether it’s about working from home (this blog) or every day life issues (my other blog).
When it comes to the topic of this blog, I really don’t have anyone to share my ideas with other than the online community. When it comes to the topics of my other blog, well, why not let as many people as possible know about my take on various issues. On the other hand, many times I have a hard time expressing myself verbally. Writing comes much easier for me.
Another issue I would link to the fact that I have something to say is that writing down my own thoughts makes it easier for me to make sense of them. To analize certain topics otherwise I wouldn’t be concerned with and maybe even formulate an opinion. Right or wrong it’s not always the point; having one on which you can start a debate is many times more important. And thanks to such debates you get the chance to analyze your position and see whether you’re wrong or right.
One more thing and I’ll go to the next point. Have you ever felt so frustrated with something that you wish you could scream from the bottom of your lungs? If I did that, I would probably end up in a hospital for the mentally challenged. Blogging, on the other hand, takes away the tension. It meets my need of expressing myself without endangering my freedom.

3). Building friendships
This is not the reason why I started blogging, but rather one that (together with others) keeps me going. I do have friends. Just a few. But those friends are what anyone wished their friends were like. Each of us would go through anything to help the other ones in any given situation. So it’s not like I started blogging to make new friends. Not that there’s anything wrong with such an approach; it’s just not my case. Not needing anymore friends doesn’t mean I keep myself isolated or that I don’t welcome new friendships. It’s just that I’m not chasing them. I let them build the natural way. Which is the best way. Blogging has already brought me a couple of them which I value a lot. And I hope it won’t stop here.

4). I blog to exercise and improve my writing skills.
I’ve always enjoyed writing. However, I’ve never been a pro at it. By writing on my blogs on a regular basis I hope to improve my style, grammar, vocabulary and syntax. I’ve seen pretty decent results so far, so I hope things will only get better in time. Up to the point when, I hope, I could write a book. I’ve thought about it ever since I was in highschool. Because of my poor writing skills, I’ve never given it a real try. Not that I plan on doing something like that anytime soon, but, who knows, as my writing improves I might, out of the blue, decide to seriously think about it.

5). I blog for money.
CosminPTR.com has been intended from the very beginning to bring in at least some money. Making it a blog hasn’t changed my hopes that some day I might earn a nice income out of it. And why not, from my other blog as well. I do believe in doing things for free (somewhat) as a public service. However, since I was raised in a family of economists and my education was in the same field, I’ve always looked at anything in terms of money. Within certain boundaries, of course. For example, I’m not the kind of person who would do anything and everything for money. But if, whatever it is that I do, has the chance of earning me some money, why not? That’s why you see ads on both my blogs. If there’s a chance of monetizing them, why not? I have drastically lowered my expectations of income from blogging and I have imposed myself to consider my blogs much more than some money generating machines (read my “Don’t Let Impatience Drag You Down” post to better understand my reasons). However I still hope I will make some money out of blogging.

Well, that’s about it folks. These are the five main reasons why I blog. What are yours?

I would like to find out why Chris, Allen.H and Darren blog.

If you would like to share your reasons with us, don’t hesitate to join. Just leave a comment and I’ll add your name on the tagg list.

While it’s the sad truth that the online work at home community is full of scams, there’s many other reasons why many of us fail with business opportunities. I mentioned one in my “How High Should I Set My Goals?” post (which actually can affect any entrepreneur - even a mom’n'pops shop) and now I’ll talk about another one: not understanding that working from home involves actual work.

When I first gained interest in this area I was picturing myself doing nothing all day long and yet, have money coming in, or - in my worst case scenarios - just doing a couple of hours’ work a day (typing a few things in my computer).

I was completely leaving out the work factor. The key ingredient to any kind of business. Why? Because I’m a lazy guy. Honestly now! I am! And since, hating to go to work was the first thing that drove me to look for an alternative, unconsciously I was actually looking for a quick way to get rich so I wouldn’t have to work my entire life.

Needless to say I found plenty of catchy headlines to feed my unrealistic dream. You know, the “Just a couple of hours a day will get you on your path to financial freedom” type of things. Some of them belonging to, I would say, honest business opportunities which I still keep an eye on and they’re still working out pretty good for those members who understood that working from home does involve work.

I’m so mad at myself when I look back at how much time (and even money) I wasted on trying different programs only to give up on them in a couple of weeks when I saw no results. And when I say I wasted time, I’m talking about three and a half years during which I jumped from one program to another without getting any results from any of them or completely giving up on my attempts of having a home business.

Many of us have heard of Amway. Many love it, even more hate it. I’ve personally been to a few of their meetings (long time ago). I even have a friend who found some success with it. From observing her I realized one thing: leaving out the fact that Amway requires you to be a good sales-person, there were 2 things that brought her the success she has: perseverance and work. She kept on going (although everyone made fun of her and tried to make her quit) and she did what the training material told her she needed to do).

I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve learned that nothing happens over night, that I need to sit down and work if I want to get something done. And the best proof (for myself, if you can believe I’m putting it that way) is this blog which I’ve managed to maintain active for two months now.

I admit this post might be a little confusing (it’s 1 A.M. and I’m tired). What I’m trying to say is that (unless you already are a succesful marketer, with a successful web site/blog which has tons of traffic, on which is enough to put a link to a new business you become part of and see results quite soon) you can join the best business opportunity there is and you will fail if you don’t do your share of work.

I wish you good luck, if you promise to wish me good luck.

Thanx for your understanding,
cosmin

I somehow have the feeling that both of the guys might have had second thoughts about the option of working from home, had they known what’s ahead of them. In other words had they made a deep analysis of their personalities and whether this is the right environment for them or not.

Seeing what ignoring such an issue can lead to, I decided to conduct this analysis on myself. I’ve found that I am work at home material and that I would cope quite well with some of the disadvantages that a home business could bring along.

To get to this point, I asked myself a few questions which I’m going to share with you. I hope that by doing so I can help you decide whether you should consider this option or not.

Here they are:

1). Do you hate, or at least dislike something about your job (what you actually have to do at your job, your boss, the commute etc)?
As I said in a previous post there’s folks who just love their job. I admit that if it’s your case, you might not be reading these lines in the first place (as you would not be interested in such a topic), but you never know. We all know how many office folks waste a bunch of time on the internet when they should be working. I don’t dismiss the possibility of some of you spotting a headline that promoted working from home which caught your attention.

Hate towards one’s job is one of the biggest motivations that turns people to the work at home world (or so I understood). It certainly had a big influence on me. It’s true it’s not the case for everyone. However, I believe if there really isn’t anything you dislike about your current job (and I’m not talking about the fact that your office window doesn’t have a nice view, but rather something that makes you hate the fact that you have to go to work every morning) you might have a problem. Why? Because it’s not easy to build a home business. There’s plenty of times when you feel like giving up. If there’s nothing you dislike about your job, there’s one less thing to motivate you to keep on going even when you feel like all your efforts are in vain. I personally hated all the jobs I’ve had so far. Even if this last one is the most enjoyable of them all, I still can’t say it’s perfect, simply because I hate working for someone else. That’s what I hate about my current job: I hate working for someone else. Every incident caused by this, fuels my desire to make it all work.

2). How much of a sociable person are you?
Have you ever met folks who just can’t stand to be alone for one second. I have a friend who hates being alone so much, that he is (almost) constantly on the phone with someone. It happened many times that we were supposed to meet somewhere in about 10-15 minutes and he would call me while driving to our meeting place just so he would have someone to talk to? Is that you? ‘Cause if it is, you’ve got yourself a little problem.

Since I don’t have any brothers or sisters I’ve always been in the position to find stuff to do on my own which taught me to become comfortable with not being around people all the time. Many times I even enjoy a little quiet time by myself. It gives me the chance to put my thoughts in order and so on. Every now and then I have the feeling I enjoy this lonliness too much.

3). How easy do you get distracted?
How many times have you found yourself browsing the net, the TV channels, the newspaper (when you’re already up to date with all the news there is)? How many times have you found yourself engaging in an unproductive conversation at work? Can you say no to such distractions? I’m guilty of some of them. You may be guilty of others. The truth is that if we don’t understand that such distractions can have a huge impact on our business (I would dare say they can make it or brake it) the outcome is not a very happy one. I know it’s hard to overcome these temptations, but, with a little will, discipline and practice they can be defeated. Not necessarily once and for all, but often enough as to keep you focused on your work.

4). Do you need to be pushed from behind to get things done?
Similar to the above: if you lack the self discipline to sit down and work on your projects (even if you still have two more weeks until your deadline) you have a problem.

I remember when I was in school, I hated to study and do my homework. I would always postpone it to the last minute and get myself into very stresful situations. Somehow, it turned out to the best, because apparently I was doing a better job when under pressure. However, every time I was in these situations I hated myself and swore I would not let them happen again. Guess what?

It still happens now with things I don’t enjoy. A home business involves processes we are not very fond of. If you’re anything like me, when time comes for you to deal with them, you might end up postponing them to the point where sometimes a week has passed, and you haven’t done any work, simply because you can’t pull yourself together and deal with these issues. This is another one that needs some will, ambition, self discipline and practice. It’s up to you.

5). Do you love working under pressure?
I used to work as a prep cook/waiter/manager in various restaurants. I used to love it when it was busy. Not only I was making good money, but it gave me the adrenaline. Although the job I have right now is much better than any of those, I still miss the rush they used to give me. And I can only imagine I will never get used to not having that in my life. I have proven to myself that I can live without it, but I guess there’s some folks who can’t. I strongly believe working from home will prove to be a wrong decision for them. Unless they start a business that involves that kind of lifestyle - I can’t imagine what that could be, but I guess you never know.

6). What’s your family’s position on you starting a home business?
I consider it’s very important to make them understand why you’re doing this, what is it that you want to accomplish and maybe even bribe them with giving an attractive answer to the good ol’ question: what’s in it for me? You want them on your side, to support you and understand why you can’t spend so much time with them at the beginning, why they (as well as you) have to make so many sacrifices until you get things rolling. There’s no doubt: you will have to make sacrifices if you want to get it right and not give them the opportunity to hit you with the “told you so” (unless you believe in all the get-rich-quick-schemes promising to make you rich in no time, with no effort, no expenses and no sacrifices).

Well, these are the points I thought are worth considering when deciding whether working from home is for me or not. The truth is I’ve done this evaluation long time ago. However, at that time I didn’t really have a realistic idea of what was waiting for me. That’s why I believe I did a good thing reevaluating the situation.

Any other ideas?

Why have I decided to ditch nofollow?
I’ve always been the kind of person who believes there’s more to life than immediate personal gain. I do believe in helping others. Not that this blog is at the stage where is of significant help when it comes to PageRank. However, every single bit of PageRank my commenters could get from me, I would be more than happy to give it away. Just to show my appreciation for them taking a couple of minutes of their time to participate on this blog. So, don’t hesitate to participate. You shall be rewarded.

How long will I keep it on?
I certainly don’t plan on deactivating it any time soon. There’s one situation I can think of that might make me change my mind about this: getting a lot of comments of the “nice post; visit my site” nature. I don’t plan on deleting or not approving any comments (except for those that are clearly spam and Akismet won’t catch them). As a result, as the blog pickups in terms of traffic and readership, I expect such comments to come my way. Depending on how frequent they become, I might have to reconsider my decision of disabling the nofollow attribute. Don’t worry though, it will be a good while before this would be the case.

I love the idea. How can I be part of this?
It’s very simple. Just go over to The yesfollow Project. As you will see, if you use Movable Type, all you have to do is disable the nofollow plugin. If you use WordPress (1.5+) you will need to download the DoFollow plugin (just follow the links). I wanted to get here to give you a piece of advice. I personally don’t have many plugins. But, so far, every single one I installed I actually had to download (many came in a .zip format), unzip and then upload the files to my plugins directory. The DoFollow plugin (although there’s a link that says “Download”) is actually a text file. What you need to do is copy it to your computer in a text editor (N.B. no Microsoft Word; preferable Note Pad) and save it as a .php file then upload it to your plugin directory. From there you know your way.

“No good deed goes unpunished”
As a recognition for your support of The yesfollow Project you can leave a comment on their web site (even on this blog) and let the world know you joined the cause. Needless to say you’ll get a search engine valid link back to your blog (in both cases).

Just go ahead, join the cause and let’s make the world a friendlier place.

Yesterday I decided to join The Z-List. As Maki and Becky pointed out in their comments (thanks guys) there’s more to the list than simply gaining links.

While I was getting ready to publish the post, I was thinking what a great idea Mack Collier had.

Note: For the purpose of this post I’ll concentrate my attention on Mack’s benefits (whether he inteded to gain such benefits or not).

Can you imagine the results he achieved with it? Every single list I’ve seen so far links to his blog. I mentioned in my introduction to the list that as it grows it takes various “identities”: everyone makes their own suggestions and various bloggers take the list from various sources. The point is that many of us on the list will be in many versions and not in others. However, Mack will be in, I would say, at least 90% of the versions (if not the whole 100%). Can you imagine how many incoming links he’s got? How many bloggers found out about him? And how many of us will become part of his everyday readers and, maybe, even add a permanent link to his blog in the blogroll?

This is the power of original ideas. While those of us who “joined” the list see pretty good results (in a matter of a couple of days my Technorati rank went up from 700,000-something to 200,000-something - I know it doesn’t mean a lot, but it has to be worth something) the one who benefited the most was Mack.

It was just a matter of seconds before I made an anology between this “small” accomplishment of Mack and the huge success stories like Google, the guys from YouTube, Microsoft and many others. How many others are trying to get a small piece of their market? I have seen at least about 5 versions of YouTube (even Google had its own version before they acquired it). And I can’t help asking myself how much longer will it be before other versions of Wikipedia will show up in the near future (if they haven’t already).

While it’s true that the internet is big enough for everyone, (and there’s various reasons for which others try to get into a certain market) I am willing to put my life on the fact that no matter what type of business we’re talking about it’s the person with the original idea that sees the best results (be it money or just popularity/fame). Of course, once a certain level of success has been achieved it’s questionable whether the original “patent owner” will be able to stay on top of things (think of Yahoo! before and after Google). The reasons for such a debate are various: incapacity to keep things fresh (others will very likely come up with ideas to improve the concept); anti-trust voices and actions (from the new competition) etc. With a good action plan, things can still be kept under control. That, however, is a different aspect of the story.

Now that I’ve realized this, it’s time I start thinking and analizing the market and come up with the new, original, inovative - call it what you want - idea (product or service) that will make me a billionaire so I can retire in my early thirties. This may take a while. In the meantime I’ll stick to writing on this blog (even if sometimes not as often as I wish). So check back.

Have you found your original idea to make you rich?

The third reason is that I realised that, although there’s a slight risk (in terms of spam) there’s a unique aspect that makes me feel comfortable about it: I took the list from Chris and am going to include in it his additions. There’s other lists from other bloggers going around. Other bloggers are picking up other lists. It’s like a tree with branches that keep growing in different directions each new branch having it’s own identity. While there’s the base of the list (those who got in among the first) each new list has new and different links.

Giving all these reasons I decide to (as TheProbabilist puts it) “spread the link love”.

It’s very easy to join the love circle. Write a new post (everyone uses the “Z-List” term in the title) in which you put the whole list bellow as well as suggest any blogs you would like to see included in it.

It’s suggested that you don’t add your own blog(s) to the list. Let those you include in the list (and who will hopefully join) add your blog.

Here’s the list:

The blogs I would like to see added to the list:

Blog-Op

“TriedItMyself”

AlleNation

eMoms at Home

Here’s the list I got from Chris (remember to add my list to it and your own suggestions):

Carols Vault
Blog About Your Blog
Monetize Your Blog
Make Money On The Net
Make$ Money$
Successful Online Money Making
Turn One Pound Into One Million$
Work at Home Blog
Blogging For Beginners
How to earn money online?
Dosh Dosh
Money Money Money
Money Making Quest
Connected Internet
Mike’s Money Making Mission
Time to Budget
Can I Make Big Money Online
Blogtrepreneur
Flee the Cube
Blogging Secret
Blogging to Fame
Million Dollar Experiment heads Down Under
Quest to make money on the internet
Kumiko’s Cash Quest
Calico Monkey
Internet Bazaar
Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Pow! Right Between The Eyes!
Billions With Zero Knowledge
Working at Home on the Internet
MapleLeaf 2.0
Two Hat Marketing
darrenbarefoot.com
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Drew’s Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
Kinetic Ideas
Unconventional Thinking
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl
The Copywriting Maven
Hee-Haw Marketing
Scott Burkett’s Pothole on the Infobahn
Multi-Cult Classics
Logic + Emotion
Branding & Marketing
Popcorn n Roses
On Influence & Automation
Bullshitobserver
Servant of Chaos
converstations
eSoup
Presentation Zen
Dmitry Linkov
aialone
John Wagner
Nick Rice
CKs Blog
Design Sojourn
Frozen Puck
The Sartorialist
Small Surfaces
Africa Unchained
Perspective
gDiapers
Marketing Nirvana
Bob Sutton
¡Hola! Oi! Hi!
Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!
Women, Art, Life: Weaving It All Together
Community Guy
Social Media on the fly

Here’s the deal: I’m a very impatient person. It’s been a problem of mine my entire life. It affects both my personal and professional life. I have a hard time at keeping it going if I don’t see immediate results. I’ve come a long way, but I still have a tendency of giving up on things if I don’t see immediate resluts. It’s even harder to fight this when there’s been a few times when my expectations have been met. Unconsciously it makes my brain think something like “See! It can happen! You don’t have to waste your time on things that don’t work right away!” I’m convinced it’s not the right approach. And I’m doing my best to overcome it.

But I won’t waste your time on my own personality issues. The reason I mentioned this is that me giving up on things it’s not the only result of my impatience. Before I give up I waste a lot of time on checking my results rather than working at the issue.

Take this blog for example. Many of you might be asking yourselves how can such a new blog (I started it in December ‘06, which is actually the reason it seems as if I lack a personal style - I’m still working on getting the right combination) have a PR4 (the toolbar sometimes shows 2, but when checking other resources it’s a general PR4). The reason for this is that the domain name is about 3 years old. The same for the actual site itself. I made it a blog back in December. However, my point is that due to my impatience towards results I’ve never really worked continuously on it. It’s been on and off. It even changed it’s theme a couple of times. As for the PR, I managed to build a few incoming links (through link exchanges, article submissions) which together with its age (which as far as I know counts towards a PR) brings my blog where it is. However, this time I made a promise to myself that I’ll keep on going no matter what (wish me good luck).

It could have been great from the very beginning. However, instead of spending time on building content and incoming links, I dedicated myself too much to useless tasks. Such as: checking my traffic stats every half hour; checking my AdSense and other affiliate accounts a couple of times a day; when initiating an e-mail discussion with another webmaster/blogger, checking my inbox a few good times a day to see if I’ve gotten a reply and many others.

As a matter of fact, every now and then I still act like that (stupid - you can say it ). I can even tell when some of my fellow regular visitors checked my site and as a result I rush to my WordPress admin to check for any possible comments. Let’s hear it again: stupid!

As I mentioned before, I’ve come a long way, but I’m still fighting it. I urge those of you who are only trying the waters at working at home: don’t do the same mistakes. It takes time! Instead of wasting that precious time on checking your stats (traffic, affiliate etc) or any other useless tasks spend it on building content and getting that traffic. You’ll thank me in the long run (I hope ).

One of the things that’s helping me right now is that I don’t think of this blog as a money making machine (couldn’t find better words). Instead I’m looking at it as my small internet corner where I write down my own thoughts, experiences, opinions etc. about the work at home world. If anybody finds it, very well. If not, well… Don’t make me think about it . I may not be always right. Nobody is. I may make mistakes. Please don’t hesitate to inform me of them. I will either correct myself or answer you with more reasons for my position.

Just had to get this off my mind. Seeing it written over here will, hopefully, help me (and why not you as well) in the battle against impatience.

Let’s wish each other good luck!

I don’t want to talk about how to make online time more productive now. What I want to emphasize is that the above situation can happen days in a row and it can get very frustrating to your family. You end up doing none of your house duties (the dishes, laundry, mowing the lawn, fixing that broken faucet in the bathroom which is costing you money on wasted water and others). Even when all your time spent online proves to be productive, you will still have to face a high resistance from your family if you ignore such duties. That, of course, if you’re working at your home business on a part time basis you’re not seeing any spectacular results which would allow you to say something like: “What do you want from me? I’m bringing the millions in the house! Leave me alone!” You’ll only raise their dissaprovement towards your entrepreneurial attempts.

The truth of the matter is that nobody can share any secrets as to how to solve this problem, simply because there aren’t any. Anyone can share with you what they’re doing on the matter. And I’m going to do just that. After that you can look for solutions on your own.

Note: While I’m a strong believer of the fact that any (work at home) entrepreneur thinks about his/her business on a constant basis - and so he/she should - (read the comment I posted to one of Allen’s posts), I’m not, in any way, encouraging anyone to disregard their duties towards the family. If you don’t have any (you’re single) and you can afford to allow the dishes to pile up until they overflow your sink and if you can afford to live in a dirty house, more power to you. Otherwise, here’s how I take care of business.

With those duties that don’t require my full attention and presence I try to do them while working. That’s not something hard to do. Although I must confess every now and then I get so caught up on things, that I forget I have other things going on that require my attention. Ooops!

The big problem comes with those that need me to be there 100% (physically and mentally). I’ve tried two solutions so far. One of them allowed me to head straight to my computer counting on my strength to put a stop some time before the day was over and take care of my other duties. Needless to say it didn’t work as I don’t have that much self discipline.

The second solution (the one I’ve managed to make it work for me) forces me to fulfill my household obilgations first. Then, once I’m done with those, I “am allowed” to turn on my computer. This one relies on self discipline as well, but I have come to the conclusion that not on as much as the first one.

It also has a second benefit: it allows me to work without having to interrupt my flow when I reach my productivity peak.

That’s about it. It wasn’t easy at first. But I managed to make it work.

What are your suggestions?