Image Source: Ben Gibbard Solo Tour – Dallas! by longhorndave

I have decided to post this Weekend Confession early, because I will be on my way to Los Angels to meet my families. Not a while ago, I posted the fact that I am singing alone on my lonely Internet Entrepreneur journey. I am actually not alone on my entrepreneur journey. There are many people like me on the Internet. I have learned a lot in the past few months. Especially, I met so many great inspirational bloggers and got motivated by many other people that I have never met face to face in my life.

I am no longer singing solo in the entrepreneur concert. I decided that it is time to reach out and social with the people that I can learn from. I have been social networking on the Internet for a while. I started involved with local business group or meeting with the local millionaires.

I have also decided to refine my goals to ensure that I can reach my goals and achieve my dream.

To refine my goal, I need to find out what were the issues that prevent me from reaching my previous goals. Personally, I have no concern or worry about my financial status. I got enough money to achieve my dream to travel around the world for 5 years. What bothering me is the future? How will I keep my life style as a luxury backpack traveler for the rest of my life?

I have to make sure that I can financially worry free for the rest of my life. I don’t have to be a billionaire to achieve that, but I need to have ways to generate enough income for the rest of my life and only work 4 hours a week.

I am so glad that my wife is so supportive on my decision to be my own boss. We both are tired working for big corporation that make us slaves of someone else’s wallet. We did make good income as high tech consultants in the IT world. We realize that life is short. We need to enjoy our life while we still can.

Even I am running little online business and make OK money; it doesn’t reach my goal of supporting my travel cost. I need to make changes. I have been not sleeping well for the past few days. I was not sure what went wrong with my strategies on making decent income online. I did find one problem I always have.

I need to work smarter. Have I spent too much time on the blogging world? How will I duplicate myself and work like a twin to get more stuff done? How will I reach my goal to work only 4 hours a week?

Image Source: TwinChaplins by longhorndave

Ever since I quitted my job and traveled 15 months in the past 2 years, I did not really work that hard. I guess my internal guts told me that I can travel for 5 years without worry about money. So my lazy mind told me to take everything easy. I think that is so wrong. I will eventually burn out my saving account. Just like the millionaire said, who I met in the local meeting. “When you reach your dream as a millionaire, you still feel broke“.

So let me share the problems I was having and hope you don’t do the same.

1. Check email every 10 minutes - Will the person die in hours if you don’t reply their email? I don’t think so. So why bother answering the email while they don’t answer your email in 10 minutes? If that is an emergency, they will find way to reach you.

2. Reading news sites - Why wasting time on reading that news while you can get the news from the folks you have lunch with? Asking your coworker what was the biggest news and gives them chance to show that are a good listener.

3. Put To-Do list on the paper and forget where you put your to-do list. I have not written down the to-do list on the paper in the past two years. I put that on my Thunderbird calendar and sync with Google Calendar. Every to-do list I put into the calendar will be done in 3 days or 3 hours. Otherwise they will not be done at all. So I only list those that have to be done in 3 hours.

4. Do everything myself - The biggest challenge to me is to release myself from the mess I created. Originally, I thought I should learn everything and do everything on my entrepreneur journey, so I know everything. Now I realized that I need to learn how to let people do my job. So I can be free to do something more important. So I have trained my partner becoming the expert in inventory management, transaction processing and customer service. I have out source some marketing work to the local business people I have met. I hire people to bookkeeping for me.

5. Answer every phone call - I have got rid of caller-id and used a free phone number from AIM Phone Line. I will just check the voice mail once a day.

6. Watching TV - Since I worked from home, I was watching too much TV show such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Jerry Springer TV show – The worst TV show in USA.

Ever since I don’t do those things anymore, I have saved myself huge amount of time. Although I am stilling spending time blogging and social networking, I have been getting more works done. Especially to get those must-done things done.

Have you released yourself from the mess and duplicate your power to work smarter like twin?