One of the sites that I have been reading quite a bit lately is eMoms At Home and yes, I am aware that I am not a Mom nor do I work from home but this site is packed with great information for anyone that has or wants to venture into blogging and/or home business.
There is weekly series that Wendy Piersall has been running and today I ventured into the fray for the first time. Wendy has a series of posts titled Monday Motivation where you share what you are going to get done that day and what will be your motivation to do so.
Since this was my first time participating, I tried to get by with a few easy tasks but Wendy called me on it and I had to respond with a more realistic list of tasks to get done today. However, now that I look back at my list I have noticed that I failed to list my motivation but knowing that I would blog about it here tonight was all the motivation that I needed.
Here is my refined list of tasks for my first involvement with Monday Motivation:
- Send out Joost invites to people that have made request on my blog.
- Write one new blog post for each of my two blogs.
- Design an offline advertising page for my comparison credit card site.
- Determine why I haven’t heard about SOBCon even though I live in the Chicago area.
- Enjoy the Bulls game with my two kids.
As Monday begins to wind down, I thought that I would provide an update on the status of each of my tasks from this first round of Monday Motivation.
- Done. When I got home from work tonight I promptly sent out the Joost invitations.
- Done. Earlier I wrote 5 Steps To Improve Your Credit Score for my personal finance blog, which I then submitted to ProBlogger’s latest writing project. This post will satisfy the goal for my 2nd post.
- Done. Last night I started a new Credit Card Comparison site and tonight I created an offline advertising page that I can post in various locations. Feel free to help me promote this new site online! 😉
- Done. Read all about SOBCon this afternoon and had an email conversation with Wendy about the event as she is presenting. As much as I want to go, I’m not sure it is going to work as I try to balance my work and family commitments.
- Done (kind of). Well, I’m watching the Bulls game with my kids (although they are now in bed) but I cannot really say that I am enjoying the game. The Bulls are getting it handed to them again tonight and that is why I am sitting here drafting this post right now with the game on in the background.
I’m happy to report that all of my defined tasks for the day have been completed. As has been discussed many times before, simply recording your goals increases the odds that you will attain your goals by a considerable margin. I’d like to take a moment to thank Wendy for running this great series of posts and I am glad that I finally took the plunge to participate.
Now I need to work on my goals related to living a healthy lifestyle in order to increase my odds of attaining those goals. After my recent buffet experience, I need all the help I can get in that department!
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
You definitely stepped up, Derek! Nice!
I had my site go down for a while today, so I’m way behind and have about 3 hours of work ahead of me – and it’s 10:30pm. 🙁
Thanks Wendy! That’s no fun to have the site go down but I’m glad to see it is back up now. Those three hours will be gone before you know it and all your work will be done!
You rock – thanks for the encouragement! Even I need a little help – especially when I get cranky tired! 😉
Tired? The night is still young! I thrive in the late night hours and often stay up way too late working on side ideas/work considering I *try* to get up for work at 4:30am.
It’s a good idea to set goals for yourself – even setting small ones is a great way to get yourself motivated!
Every morning the first thing I do when I wake up is set new goals for the day/week or review my existing goals. I don’t always get everything I want done, but at the very least it provides some structure to my day.
I started doing this about 2 years ago, and it’s helped quite a bit.
I also thrive at night Derek – less distractions, and usually more motivation.
Though I find when I get in a good routine I actually get more done in the morning/early afternoon. It’s just hard to keep the routine up all the time.
one of my biggest problems is writing things down in a list. i have such a hard time with it, it’s like this weird mental block against making lists. i don’t even write grocery lists. i refuse. i need to get over it. i’ll try to do this post soon too. hopefully 😀
oh yea, and great job! it’s really hard to check off everything in one to-do list. i usually only aim for about 80% and i consider that awesome 😀
You CAN do it, MsDanielle! Really, you can! 😀
I hope I am not too late, please send me one Joost invitation. Thanks 🙂
Sitting down to make a dolist is crucial to being productive. In blogging and webmastering, it can get very distracting from the purpose. This site is good for helping one avoid those pitfalls. Thanks for turning us on to it. As you said, I am neither a mom nor do I work from home, but hey . . . working on the blog counts right? I am really into templates and charts to plan my goals. With respect to these goals, I’ve created a few WORD files you can print up and use on a clipboard to arrange your day before you ever get distracted. They’re at my site in the freebies section (nothing special, but they help me daily)
Damien, I’m sure you will become hooked on reading Wendy’s site as I know that I have. Thanks for stopping by and sharing the pointer to your Word files to help organize a bloggers thoughts/tasks.
OK, Derek, what do I owe you for that plug? 😉
Lol. All you owe me is to continue publishing great content on your site as I’ve learned quite a bit by reading your posts.
But I do have *affordable* (aka cheap) text-link-ad spots available on my personal finance site! 😈
It’s a great idea to set goals, pushing yourself is very important. What really starts to make the difference is when you start to realize that you are exceeding your goals on a regular basis.
Scott
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