The Official Internet Marketing Sweetie Blog

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Working Your Online Business While You’re Offline

I don’t know about you, but as an online business owner I find I have to get OFFLINE for part of each workday. One of the main reasons is to keep myself from being sucked into the highly-distracting Internet. You probably now EXACTLY what I mean.

The blogs, the browsing, the following links innocently from one site to another, checking stats and then BAM before I know it an hour or two (or more) has passed and I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing work-wise.

Even though my business is an online one, that doesn’t mean I have to actually be AT my computer to take care of all the tasks necessary.

Some Things I Do Offline for My Business:

* Plan Content
Each week, I plan all my articles, emails and blog posts for the following week on paper. Of course, there’s some impromptu writing done during the week, but this is something I can plan to make the next week more productive.

*Print out Written Projects
This lets me tweak them and make them better where necessary and later if I need them in printed form I can type them up quickly. I love getting on the climbing machine at the gym and editing. Makes my workout go by faster and I’m still productive.

* Plan the Next Day
Each evening, I write out my to-do items for the next day. That way, I’m focused when I get onto the vortex called the Internet in the morning.

* Long Term Business Planning
I can plan my month, year or even longer without the need to be on the computer. Having it all laid out on a white board, erasable calendar or even paper helps me visualize things really well.

* Plan & Assign Assistant Work
No need to be online to figure out which assistant gets what tasks. I can plan things out and simply load the tasks to my online tasks manager when I’m back online.

How about you? If you work online, do you take time to get away from the computer, but still get work accomplished?

2 Comments:

Blogger David said...

So many of us in the online world neglect the offline side of our businesses. I teach online tactics and try to remind people to get involved in the offline world as well. Good advice and Good Post.

2:15 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Alice,

Like you, I'm more productive online when I organize my work first.

Before I turn my computer on, I make a list of everything I want to accomplish online and plan how long I want to spend on each task. Then I stick to my list. Of course I have to be flexible sometimes, but planning my online work ahead of time keeps me from getting sidetracked by irrelevant emails, etc.

Thanks for the tip about planning your blog posts and articles for the upcoming week. I've started to do a bit of that, but I could be doing much better!

4:52 PM  

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