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Today I'm conducting an experiment. Instead of going to my office, I took my laptop and went to the park. With no Internet connection.
Pardon me if there are too many "I"s in this issue. :)
I've always loved sleeping longer and getting up later.
It all started when I was in school. Then it continued at work.
Yes, I've always been my own boss at work. I've been working for myself for the past 16 years.
But this is a relative freedom.
When you work for yourself, you need to control yourself because you don't report to a boss.
This scenario has its drawbacks too. Responsibility. And the fact that you are your own strictest judge.
Do you love doing what you do?
I do.
But not everything about it.
It's always been hard for me to work with people who seem to be less responsible about their work than I am.
Every time I hired employees, I'd always give them part of the work I was doing myself.
In the beginning, I was making work plans for them.
And only ever playing by the rules.
I was stating how much time (approximately) my employees should spend completing each task. First, I'd always check to see how much time it would take me to complete the task myself. How much time I would need to do the same work.
But I started noticing that it took my employees much longer to do the same things.
My plans weren't working. But why not?
Later I started purposely doubling the time it would take for me to complete the same task.
That was working better.
BUT!
I would spend too much time correcting their work and discussing why they weren't doing their work the way I'd told them to in my plan.
Instead of shortening my working hours, I was prolonging them. What did I do in cases like this? I told my employees goodbye. And kept doing everything myself.
I'm not a designer, but I had to master design.
I'm not a programmer, but I had to study the basics of programming and html.
I'm not a sales manager, nor am I a client manager, but I had to take on those roles too. That is, in order to get my work before my deadline.
I'm hyper-responsible. I was taught to stay on top of my tasks by my mom's example.
Is that good or bad? There are some drawbacks, but the pluses… They're huge.
As a result, I mastered many fields. I've become a marketing expert, a CEO, a pagemaker, a designer, etc. Oh yeah, I've also become a specialist in SEO. That's been my passion from the very beginning.
Many people dislike SEO because it's too long.
And it also might seem like you're working blindfolded. You keep working and working, waiting and waiting.
On average, search engine promotion takes about 6 months for the results to become visible. Few people are able to wait this long.
But the pleasure you feel when Google starts loving you is truly indescribable.
You get the traffic, which you convert first into visitors, and then into customers.
You never know when this day will come. But it always comes.
In the past 16 years that I've been doing SEO, I've promoted more than 1,000 different projects.
Yes, more than 1,000 projects! And do you know what's the most surprising?
I've only ever had a brief plan of action, mostly inside my head.
The years were passing by.
Dozens of helpers-planners started to appear. I dove into studying them. I was reading hundreds of articles that described how well they could optimize your time, and help you get much better results.
I was trying those tools every time: Trello, ToDoList, Evernote, Excel, Asana, WorkFlowy, etc.
I was saving all of my ideas, planning every day, and imposing deadlines. I was making plans for a week, 2 weeks, 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, a year, or even 5 years in advance….
As a result, I was under a great deal of stress. The tasks kept piling on.
Every day, they stared at me from the screen. Every day….
The panic overwhelmed me, and I felt stressed that I couldn't keep up with time.
I was working more and more. (Do you recognize yourself in this?)
No days off. No holiday leaves. I was working and working to do everything according to my plan.
They're working, I kept telling myself. So many people are talking about it.
What did I do to correct the situation?
First, I got rid of the tasks my friends and colleagues had told me to complete. (Not all of them, of course, but MANY of those.)
I don't want to spend my life working on things that don't help other people. I mean, the kind of work you only do to earn money.
It's very important for me to hear kind words from people.
To be proud of what I'm doing.
Each of your "Thank you" messages gives me a pair of wings.
When I finally realized this, I got rid of many of my projects. That's how my blog IWANNABEABLOGGER came to be.
Later. Specifically, it's going on right now. It's still happening these days.
I quit planning.
It simply wasn't my way of doing things.
This approach didn't work for me.
Now, I realize that every person has their own set of abilities and possibilities. It's important to understand them before you start using them.
Planning is simply not for me.
It does more harm than good – at least for me, personally.
Yes, earlier I was involved in more projects and could do more things. But at what cost? At the expense of my health. I was very stressed out back then.
Please take care of yourself. Fall in love with yourself!
Not long ago, Jon Morrow from SmartBlogger sent me an email. Traffic roadmap.
I took it as a confession. Look at it, please. We can apply it to our entire lives.
It's critical to find what you love doing the most. It's very important for the thing you love to bring you results.
You need to learn throughout your entire life. To move toward your goal. Unlike most people, I don't have a goal. I'm not fixated on launching an online course or on getting 10,000 subscribers, 100,000 visitors, etc.
My goal is to help. And that's all.
To Help.
At the moment, I'm trying to find the best in me. The best in my knowledge in order to help.
I've got many fears and a lack of self-confidence.
I fear that I still know too little. That I can't earn money doing what I like. That nobody's needs what I offer.
I get nervous every time I send a newsletter and get low open-rates. Yes, I average 40%, but I still think that's too low. It means that 60% of the recipients are not interested in what I'm writing – that they don't need it.
But I'm not as pessimistic as you might think. I love those 40%.
I love myself, and I value your support.
Like, now you're reading these words, and I'm happy. Smiling. :) THANK YOU!
Pardon me for speaking about myself, rather than about you. I want very much for you to get to know me better – and I want to get to know you better in return.
Conclusion
To-do lists and planners are not necessarily effective for everybody. If you're hyper-responsible like I am, they will probably just distract you. Every one of us understands what needs to be done, but we are just afraid or lazy.
Now I only use Trello to jot down my ideas on what to write about.
I use Toggl timer to keep track of every minute that I spend on work.
And I use Evernote for bookmarks and saving different statistics and data.
Google Docs for writing posts. Google Sheets for analysis and research.
Yes, I use tools. I find them helpful. But don't trust everyone who says that these tools will help you. Take a look at Jon Morrow's flowchart.
Do you enjoy doing what you're doing? Do you get results? Do you stay focused?
I was lucky enough to get a free copy of Nathan Barby's book called Authority. It's an awesome and amazingly helpful book.
It gave me a push, as well as The One Thing when it comes to understanding who I am.
I bought his app Commit, which I use constantly.
Impermanence is my problem.
I'm running from one task to another. And then I don't have enough time to complete the most important task.
That's why I publish new blog posts so rarely (+ because I'm afraid that you won't like my new posts. After all, so many good things are already written.)
Please share the following with me: What disturbs you and screws you over?
I know you can sense what it is.
In order for me to get to know you, and for you to get to know me better, we need to share not only our successes but our failures too.
P.S. In the next issue of Tips-Helpers, I will tell you what emails you need to write for your subscribers and online friends.
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