To assist yourself in becoming more productive and eventually more successful, it is important that you learn to be a good boss. A good boss provides detailed expectations for his employees. Since you are now your own boss, it is up to you to provide this structure for yourself.
Treat your home based business just as you would a normal career. Utilizing simple time management techniques will help you focus your energies where they are needed, keep you focused and on task and you won't find yourself feeling overwhelmed because you have so much to do and don't know where to start.
I personally like to use a day planner but you can get the same results with a "To Do" list and hand written planner. Here are a few things you can do to help you become better organized and more efficient with your time.
1. Set yourself a work schedule. It is important that you have a balance between your work life and home life. Especially since both occupy the same space. It's not like you lock up your desk for the day, drive home and unwind and then walk into a home environment which is separate from your work environment. By creating and sticking to a work schedule, you are providing some separation between the two. Once you have created a work schedule that is acceptable to your needs, stick to it! If you are the ambitious type it is easy to get carried away and just keep working and working until eventually you find yourself working from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed because there will always be one more thing that needs to be done. Those things will still be there to do tomorrow, so don't worry about that.
2. There are most likely some basic things that you want to do on a regular basis. Things like article writing and submissions, link exchange requests, blog updates, adding content to your website, pricing and product updates, etc.. These things should be scheduled so that you A) don't become overwhelmed and get stuck doing nothing because you don't know what to start next and B) you won't forget to do them at all. It is easy to get carried away doing something and it can quickly turn into the never ending task. For example, when requesting link trades, you could do this for years on end and never finish. On the other hand, if you have it written on your schedule that you will work from 10:15 to 12:00 on requesting trades, you know when will start working on it and when you will be finished. Knowing that you have an allotted time for this task will also result in your focusing and working harder on getting more done within the specified time frame before moving on to your next task.
3. Often on our journeys through cyberspace we run across interesting pages that we end up spending some unscheduled time reading, often resulting in following links to other interesting pages which occupy even more of our time. Meanwhile, we are falling behind schedule which is either going to result in some things not getting finished or us working longer to get them done. Think about how much time you spend getting sidetracked while browsing and if seems like a significant amount or you feel that it is getting in the way of your productivity, then try this. Create a new folder in your "favorites" and call it something like, "To Be Read" or "Interesting Pages". As you traverse the internet throughout the day and you run across something that you feel compelled to spend time looking over, simply save the link to your new folder. You can even add some scheduled time to look through these. I personally schedule mine for first thing in the morning and I enjoy having a cup of coffee while looking through these.
4. One of the pitfalls of working for yourself and especially on the internet is that throughout the day things constantly pop up that I feel needs to be addressed, such as adding new sponsors to a page, or an error on my site somewhere etc. It is easy to get sidetracked like this and get away from what you were working on. These types of things should be jotted down on your to-do list so that you won't forget but you also won't get yourself sidetracked. You should have a scheduled time for working on your "To Do" list.
5. The last thing before shutting down the for day, you should review your "To Do" list and revise your daily work schedule accordingly should there be things there that would take more time than your scheduled "To Do" time. This way you end each day with a sense of accomplishment when checking off your scheduled tasks, and know exactly what you have in store for you the next day.
