Image Source: Petoskey Clock Tower
Few days ago, a friend of mine named Mark Hayward, posted a great question on his blog at “The Cat Is Outta The Bag – How Top Bloggers Divide Their Time For Maximum Exposure.” The post contains few high profile bloggers, including me, with one question to ask.
How do you divide your time between search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and interacting with readers?
Thank Mark for considering me as one of the high profile blogger. This question got me thinking about how I divide my time on blogging and my online business. It’s also a great question for everyone to think about the time we spent in our life.
Does the time we spent on do any good to our dream and life?
These were my answers:
- since I have other online business to run, I try not to spend too much time on blogging and social networking
- I spend 2 hours creating my blog post including on-site SEO
- and 2 hours on reading people’s blog posts and about 2 hours on social networking
- I try to spend 8 hours a day on my own business
After reading the great book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, I start re-thinking about the same question and all the answers. I think all of us are working too hard in the blogging world. I really think we all need to work smarter and work less hours. I start asking myself a question. Do you work like an entrepreneur or a dreamer? I realized that I have wasted a lot of time on the Internet, which gets me no where near my dream. I have once again changed my blog tag line to “Work Like An Entrepreneur & Play Like A Billionaire.” That exactly describes what my dream might be. I don’t have to be very very super rich, but I want to enjoy my life like a billionaire does.
This is all happening in one night. I think I have been working too hard and not working smarter enough. I work almost 14 hours a day and still not even close to my dream. I have to make changes dramatically.
What if I can work 16 hours a week or even 8 hours a week and can still travel around the world and do my charity work the same time? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
I have to work smarter and spend less time on the Internet doing useless things. I don’t think I will give up blogging, because that is fun entertainment to me. However, I will change my strategy to focus on making more profit in less working hours.
I believe everyone can do the same. I would like to ask my readers serious questions.
Are you working hard or working smart? What’s your plan to work smarter with fewer hours?
I encourage you to write a post about “Clock is ticking – Are you working hard or working smart” and answer the questions in your post as a self-review. It will be great to link back to this post or leave your URL and comment in this post. I would love to link to your post and see what you come up with. In this case, we will all learn from each other.
If you don’t know what I am talking about, please do yourself a favor and get the book. You will thank me later.
Terence – nice, thought provoking post! I am right there with you working fourteen to fifteen hours a day.
But, I beleive that I am laying the foundation that will allow me to work [much] less within the next few years.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
@Mark:
I think I am working very hard, but not every efficient. I have wasted a lot of time on checking useless email messages and research on something not moving my business forward.
I can definitely do better job by keeping my income while working less hours. After reading the book, I practice the lesson and only check email two times a day. I already save few hours. So I only work 8 hours a day in the past 3 days.
That’s great improvement. With those 18 hours I have saved , I actually have more time to spend with my families. That make me feel great and make my parents happier.
I can definitely see that you are building a great foundation. Keep it up!
Great post. People sometimes knock books like The 4 Hour Work Week because they think it’s unrealistic, but hey, it gives us all something to shoot for.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
@John:
That’s right. If you don’t practice or get your action start, it doesn’t matter how good the book is. Thank you for stopping by.
I agree that time management has to be a very important factor for everyone, and when you are managing more that one thing it is easy to get overwhelmed. What i do is prioritise and assign weightage as well as apportion time to things.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
@Recliners:
That’s right. Prioritize your tasks. For some people that’s the tough part. It requires practice to get used to.
I think the key thing to understand working smart is to understand the 20/80 rule, the pareto principle. If not mistaken, I think you blog about it something called 30-70 rule right? It is the same concept. Focusing on the 20% to get the 80% result makes you a smart person. Understand this is not enough but the real difficult thing is the ability to identify what tasks are fall into this 20% which really makes you a smart person.
Twitter: TerenceChang
says:
@ChampDog:
Well. Actually, my 30-70 concepts are just the part of the 20%. It means that with my 30-70 rules, it will make 80% results. You are right. There won’t be really smart guy if everyone knows how to do those 20%.