Activity Does Not Pay the Mortgage

I could have named this post "Being busy does not pay the Bills"… "Don’t confuse activity with productivity" or anything along those lines.

Bottom line — be productive, not active.

But it’s not easy.

It’s 6:20AM Tuesday morning - like I do every morning I walk upstairs to my home office — boot up my computer — check my email and begin my day (first mistake).

It is now 10:22AM — I’ve finished replying to customer emails… finished replying to inquiries on the services I offer… answered some personal emails… and visited the forums where I received a follow up post email — four hours.

Time to get to work. First, I need to check my voice mail.

Good… I only have four messages. Let me return these calls real quick before I "start" my day.

Shoot… it’s 11:18AM — think I’ll grab something to eat.

Okay… time to get busy — but I need to check my web sites and blogs real quick to make sure they are still up and running. Good… they are still there.

Better check my email again - been like five hours since I checked it last.

Hmmm… a new social bookmarking site — let me go check it out real quick.

Finally, Technorati sent me an email that my issue with claiming my blog is fixed - let me go claim it real quick. Only took them two weeks. Must be busy.

What!!… it’s 3:48PM — the day is going by quick.

I’ll not bore you with the rest of my day — but for the most part it was the same.

Does this sound like your day?

I was real busy doing things that needed to be done… but I did not pay a single bill that day — much less my mortgage payment.

Granted, there was emails I had to answer — but a good FAQ page would have answered most of the questions. Something else I need to do.

You could say this is more of a time management issue… I agree, but not totally.

I think it has more to do with focus.

We are so inundated with "noise" competing for our attention, that we are distracted from doing what we set out and need to do.

There are forums we need to visit… emails to answer… videos on YouTube to watch… calls to make… sites to visit… membership sites to learn stuff… then we start all over again from the beginning, because now we have more email and there are more forum posts.

Active? - yes…. productive? - not so sure.

With that said… I’ll finish up this post real quick — you have better things to do — productive things.

There is nothing wrong with answering emails, visiting forums, learning new things or participating in a membership site.

In fact… these are things we need to do.

Keep in mind though… if there is work to be done — do it.

Focus on what needs to be done… plan it out.

Set specific times of the day when you check your email — you do not need to check it every five minutes… and turn off the audible that lets you know you have new email.

When you are doing something — ask yourself, "is this really the best use of my time?"

If it’s not… well, you know the answer.

Time to go… I have a house payment I need to make!