Whatever it is you’re doing right now, stop. Seriously. Click the little “X” in the upper right hand corner of this browser, close out of all your programs, except Notepad and start writing. No more excuses about how you can’t find a niche or how you just need to understand every single intricacy of WordPress before you can start your first blog. I don’t care if you just found the greatest Warrior Special Offer (WSO) that is going to change your life, or if Pat just published his newest podcast. Stop whatever it is you’re doing and start writing.
Disconnect yourself from the internet, go sit down at your desk and do nothing but write for the next 20 minutes. You can finish the rest of this post when you get back, I promise it’s not going anywhere.
Finished?
Now I know the majority of you are still reading. So what was the point of me even asking you to go write in the first place? If you’re incapable of sitting down for 20 minutes every day (and many times much longer than that) and just writing then you’re going to fail. Why? Because that’s what this business is all about. Either you pay someone to write killer content for your sites or you spend the time to write it yourself. Either you pay someone to write hundreds upon thousands of articles for link building and site promotion or you do it yourself. It’s that simple.
So what’s the problem?
There’s really 2 problems that I can think of that are probably preventing you from doing what I previously said.
You’re lazy. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Somewhere along the way you probably got the idea that Internet Marketing was all roses and rainbows and we sat at home eating bon-bons and playing with our computers while the rest of the world went to work. If you already work full time you better start disciplining yourself now to the fact that you’ll be working – not learning, not creating websites, not marketing or blogging, but working – every day when you get home at 5 or 6 o’clock (after being with your family of course).
Just for reference, I wake up at 6:15am, get to work by 7:15am and don’t get home until after 6pm, except for Fridays usually. I eat dinner and hang out with my wife and dogs until around 7:30pm and if its Monday, Wednesday, or Friday I put in about 30 minutes of heavy bag work, jump rope and sprints. After a quick shower I sit down and work until midnight.
Now obviously there are some days that we go out to dinner or to a movie or to a football game, or whatever it may be. But for the most part you’ve got to discipline yourself to committing a certain amount of time to working.
Everything is important and nothing is important. If you’re anything like me then you feel like you can’t possibly start something until you know everything about it. I struggled for over 3 months trying to learn every little thing about Internet Marketing, and that is probably the most fruitless endeavor you can undertake. For one, there’s about a thousand different strategies of making money online, all of which work if you just put in the time. But more importantly the most successful people in this industry aren’t the ones who know every in and out, they’re the ones with vision and the will to act on that vision day in, and day out.
Just Do Something
Over the next month, 3 months, 6 months, year, 2 years, and so on you’re going to struggle to take action. That’s just the way it is. Sometimes it will come easier (usually when you’re doing something you love), while other times it will seem dang near impossible. Well I’m telling you right now that you are capable of succeeding as long as you consistently do something.
When you get home from work, and after you spend time with your family, don’t sit down at your computer and start browsing the internet on how to change the background color of your sidebar, or how to center your logo and move it down the page 3 pixels. There’s a time and place for stuff like that, but first you need to sit down and just write. Get your content out there and stop making excuses. Maybe after you write for an hour each night then you can allow yourself 20 minutes to fiddle around with WordPress or read your favorite tech blog. Whatever you do, just do something that brings you closer to your goals and dreams.
This is very motivational article. I do get lazy sometimes. I hope your article is going to bring some changes in my life. Thank you.
Excellent post. Perfectionism and especially forums are a major time suck. We often think we’re working, but really we are just wasting time, since those things barely make a difference in the end result.
One day I was sitting on the couch – I was supposed to be writing an article for one of my sites – and after about 20 minutes my wife says, “What are you doing?” I was like, “I’m writing an article.” And her obvious response is, “Then why haven’t you typed anything in the past half hour?”
I wasted so much time on the Warrior Forum just browsing my first couple months. If only I had spent that time growing my sites…