The Beginning
14 Jan 2015This is the story of how I will attempt to start a profitable online business in a year and a half. I have an employment contract that will end in June of 2016 and that’s why I am on such a tight deadline. Nevertheless, I’ve always believed in Parkinson’s Law.
work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
I’ll probably blog about it a little more later on, but this is something I have tested numerous times. I adhere very strongly to the idea of “sink or swim”, or in other words: I know that if I put myself in the deep end, I’ll learn to swim. The hard part is having the courage to drop myself into the water without any way out. And so, here begins my journey.
A Productivity Framework
One of the best (and simplest) posts I’ve read on productivity and personal development is The Only 2 Tricks You Need for Maximum Productivity. It can be summarized in the following two points:
- Plot your day
- Carve out time each week to reflect and calibrate
As a result of this, there are a couple things I am aiming to do.
A Daily Habit
It’s so important to develop a daily habit. In July of 2014, I tried to wake up at 4:30am every day for 30 days. In those 30 days, I was so productive and I just felt great overall. I would wake up and run for half an hour, and then I would come home to read a book over breakfast. It was my personal development morning and I can see the power of this multiply if I made it a permanent pattern.
What’s even more important is having an idea of what you will be doing for any particular day. The link above suggested that we take 10 minutes out of every morning to plan this. But why not shift those 10 minutes to the night before? This way, the moment we get up, we know what we need to do. There is zero friction, just get up and do. For this purpose, I have set up a whiteboard where every night I will write down the things I’ll do in the following day.
7-Day Evaluations and 28-Day Evaluations
To keep myself on track, I have decided to do an evaluation of my progress every 7 days, and also another more macro evaluation of my progress every 28 days. These evaluations are also kind of like summaries for what worked and what didn’t work over the previous span of time. This allows me to better keep track of my progress and not so easily forget what I learned along the way. For the purposes of this blog, I’ll only be posting the 28-day evaluations.
That’s it for now
I have to make sure I’m not trying too many things all at once, because what usually ends up happening is that I get nothing done at all. I look forward to writing the first 28-day evaluation!