The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Amazon Price: $11.97
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
This is a book that you'll either love or hate. Timothy has a good writing style, and has plenty of great ideas, however some are quite controversial and I'd expect some people would dismiss them qui...

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Amazon Price: $9.57
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
The reason why astrologers seem dead on is because they are so generic they would seem to fit anyone's situation. The same goes for this book. This books habits are so generic and so vague that they...

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Amazon Price: $9.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
As with most books like this, a great deal of the content is common sense. But as is always the case with me, formalizing it and explaining it is always what I need.

He explains the natural thought p...

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
Amazon Price: $16.47
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
I have just started to read this book, and from the very beginning it feels like you are inside the normal reality of manufacturing.
It is easy to write books about theories, but giving a real feelin...

I wrote the other day about commenting on your target guru’s blog to get exposure and back links. Today it occurred to me that you could indirectly move your stalking efforts forward by commenting on other blogs that are aimed at the same target audience. To that end, I’m posting a response to a question on internet marketing guru Michael Cheney’s blog here (I checked — his blog supports pingbacks).

Before I get into that, how is this going to help with my stalking of Russell Brunson. Like I said, it will happen indirectly. Being active in the community where Michael and Russell operate, and where people in their target markets hang out, will help to establish my own position in those markets. You don’t want to wait to get involved until after you’ve established contact with your target guru — you want to already have a foundation to work on with them.

Okay, so back to Michael Cheney. In his Get Momentum TV blog, he posted an entry titled “Mistakes” today, and whether intentionally or not, the video shown in his post was the one from yesterday. Under the video, he asks the question “What mistakes have you made and what did you learn from them?” Here’s one of my big past mistakes and lessons learned.

When I first quit my 9 to 5 job and went independent, I took full advantage of the flexibility. At that point, I had no day-to-day obligations, which enabled me to pour my full energy into whatever aspect of getting my business ready to roll that I chose. My work days were totally unstructured, and I just charged full steam ahead, fueled by the excitement of turning ideas into reality.

My mistake was the failure to recognize that at some point I needed to introduce structure into my work. Unstructured work propelled forward by enthusiasm is great as long as the things you’re excited about are among the things you would schedule yourself to work on if you were operating from a well chosen list of priorities.

But once you’ve finished the things that are both exciting and necessary to getting things started, you’ve got to get busy on the things that are important but not so exciting. Because I lacked structure and discipline, I kept moving from fun work to fun work to the neglect of things that would have grown my business.

Not making as much money as you could be tends to put a damper on the fun of doing fun work.

The problems created by my lack of structure were compounded as I got married and had a few children. With an increasing number of people with easy access to me placing demands on my time, it became increasingly difficult to guard my work hours and get anything done at all, fun or not.

Among my new years resolutions this year are some designed to impose a little more structure on both my work and personal time to ensure that important aspects of my business and life don’t get ignored.

In summary: you’ve got to be aware of the things that need to get done, and impose enough structure on yourself to ensure that they do get done. Beyond that, if you’re lucky enough to have work that you’re inspired to pour your time and energy into, and which you’re able to push forward fast by working on whichever part you’re most excited about at the time, give yourself the flexibility to do so. Just be sure to assess your progress regularly and crack down on yourself when the need arises.