Quitting The Day Job

Lessons Learned in September

Wake me up when September ends…

Seriously! What a month!  Financial ruin and economic despair!  Partisan politics and election turmoil!  If only I could see Russia from my house instead of that stupid double-wide!

Last month as Quitting the Day Job was getting off the ground, I decided to use September as “bust my butt” month.  My intention was to work as hard as I could on all of my internet ventures.  Priority, of course, was given to Quitting the Day Job, but I divided up my time to each of my other projects as well.  I split my time into 3 specific segments:  Posting, Promoting and “Work” (meaning maintenance work on sites, plug-in upgrades, etc.).  How did I do?  Eh.  I did okay but not great.  But I did learn several things, both positive and negative.

Positive:  It really helps to lay out a timeline of work on a calendar.  At first I laid out what I would do every day, splitting the time into lunchtime and nighttime, but was pretty general about what I needed to do.  That was too much.  I backed off to where I only planned ahead for a week.  There are too many variables to account for: kid’s activities, sickness, hurricane aftermath, Molly Ringwald marathons on AMC…

Negative:  Don’t think that you can do too much.  Often I would list out 3 items for a single evening and then barely get one done.  I learned that I needed to be realistic about what needs to be accomplished in a set time period.  Better to underestimate what can be done and then use any extra time to “get ahead” than to plan out a must do list and get nothing accomplished.

Positive:  The best approach seems to be to concentrate all efforts in a single timeframe to working on one site or idea.  That way all concentration is focused like a friggin’ laser beam from a shark’s head on your project.

Negative: Don’t make the assumption that you can actually get work done everyday.  For example, by Friday the grind of the work week has taken such a toll on the wife and I that we usually crash for most of the night.  If we have the energy, we might go out to eat, but otherwise we vegetate and let the frustrations of the week release.  While I might hop on the computer to check emails or play a game, I really have a hard time doing work to Quit the Day Job.  I might, might, do a little work.  But the brain needs a rest.  I’ll plan this into future calendars.

Positive: I have several sites that I will call “automatic”.  In other words, a single days work will allow them to run for the entire month without any real intervention.  I have learned that If i dedicate one day to them at the beginning of the month, I can ignore them for the rest of the month and work on sites that require more attention.

Negative: A lot of work went into September for very little gain.  The $ never showed up.  It can be very disheartening to do so much work and see nothing come out of it.  So much so that it could be easy to give up.  But I won’t yet.

Positive:  I learned that while a generic list of “goal” and a calendar work great, I really need a slightly more specific achievable set of tasks for the month.  If i sit down and plan them out, I can then use the calendar as tool to meet those goal.

October

I will use September as a template for October.  I’ll set up a prioritized list of goals.  Turn the goals into tasks that can be put on the calendar and schedule my time more realistically.  That way I should be able to use my time more effectively and hopefully profit from the experience.