Would 30 Hour Days Help?

Sometimes don’t you wish there was more hours in the day, or maybe 8 days in a week? It would leave more time for the things we enjoy like relaxing, dining, watching TV, spending time with the family, walking the dog, reading the paper and the list goes on. Of course for the focused self motivated people they can now get projects complete on time, give their clients more attention and end of the month increase their profits.
Unfortunately there is only 24 hours in a day and I can’t see this changing anytime soon.

So what’s the solution?

My most productive days have always been Sundays.. Crazy right? It should be day for relaxing but my better other half seems to work most Sundays so I use this day to catch up on anything wish is missed, review the week which has just pasted in terms of income and productivity and PLAN the next week. Planning the week or month ahead I believe is a vital part of a productive week.

Let’s take a video course for example :

7 videos and each video 15 minutes in length. Now let’s be real. To prepare notes, record the video, removed bleeps, editing and producing is going to take around 1 hour.

So you’ve two choices.

Option 1 : Clear one day in your schedule to complete this.. (and I’m only taking 7 hours – still leaves 17 hours 🙂

Option 2 : Take one hour each day to make one video.. End of the week your video series is complete.

Anyone which has done a few videos can easily achieve this. If your skills are writing, coding or design you’ll have you own pace and know what’s achievable. Staying consistent is the key!

Moving Faster!

I’ve always been a fan of outsourcing. In general any project I get into would have 4 important elements. Product to sell (idea), copywriter to craft an appealing sales letter, graphic designer to make it look good and most important a marketing plan.

At max I would be completing two of these tasks and the rest would be outsourced.

It’s important to allow time for things to happen. For example if I’m developing a software I would allow 8 – 12 weeks for development and testing which would be mostly outsourced. So this is the reason I would always have 2 – 3 projects or ideas going at once. But let’s take this 7 part video course.

In one hour I can give the copywriter an outline of the course plus access to review. The graphic designers would get similar notes. Along with a swift PayPal transaction my sales page is now complete. This is important because we can’t sell or market the product without it. But it only took one hour. I would have pre-booked the writer and designers to start and deliver on certain dates knowing turnaround is usually 72 hours for this type of project. Monday copywriter starts, delivers on Wednesday evening, designers start Thursday and complete on Saturday. Magic.. it’s all falling into place now and the only thing needed is a marketing plan.

This is where you can really waste a lot of hours. Forget videos, articles and SEO.. All that stuff. If time is an issue and you want results – you simply buy traffic. It’s that easy. Facebook Ads, CPA networks, affiliate networks, Google ads etc… It’s a simple process of picking your target audience and creating your ad. Of course this needs to be monitored but we’re not going to spend 6 hours a day checking stats! Again it comes back to staying consistent and picking one hour each day to monitor and adjust your ads.

So working one hour a day to create your product and one hour a day to market your product you can easily have this complete in 2 weeks. But why is it some people cannot achieve this?

I put it down to distractions. As I said my most productive day is Sunday. You might ask what makes it different than all other days? Here’s a few reasons :

Monday to Saturday I’ve a team of staff to assign work to, help with questions when unsure, check over tasks etc. This alone digs into my productivity and kills time. Sunday’s are always quite!

Also since I moved to an active office with 4 of us there from 9.30 am – 4.30pm each day I’ve seen a major drop in productivity during these hours. My solution is arrive in the office at 8.00am and get a head start before the distractions arrive.

So creating that extra one or two hours required each week is relevantly easy but of course comes with sacrifices.

Mine would be, I get up 90 minutes early, (I honestly feel more focused when up before everyone else so I like this). I take one day a week away from the office and work from home so I’ve now at two days without office distractions, I explain kindly to my better other half that one night a week I’ve to work long hours. Where people got the 8 hour work day I don’t know. 8 hours work and 8 hours sleep leaves a lot of boredom in my mind.. I’ve no issues doing 10,12, 14 hour work days when needed. Just in those sacrifices I created another working week.

Are you a Facebook, Skype or E-mail Junkie?

I’ve even got emails from subscribers saying they’re spending all day in the inbox clicking links, checking out offers and pretty much getting nothing done! My system here is killing 3 birds with one stone. First thing in the morning email, Skype and Facebook are opened, reviewed, and replied. This usually take 15 minutes and all accounts are pretty active. My support desk is outsourced so I review twice a week and have any issues I need to deal with posted in Skype for me to check each morning. I repeat this some evenings, not all. That’s it.. no back and forward all day wasting time.

Are You Taking Notes?

My day is controlled by my Gmail calendar which comes back to planning. I set a date for everything and note it. I also found setting up websites with timers really put’s the pressure on and helps get things complete. For example if my video project launch date was 21 days from now I would have a timer on the website “Coming in 21 Days” On whatever date.

Everything comes down to a having a plan of action, executing it, working with people who deliver on time, staying consistent and replacing time with money where possible.

If you enjoyed this post please like, share and post a comment below. Also if you’ve any tips which will help other people’s productivity please share in your comment.