Getting things done is a challenge nowadays.

In another post, I talked about the army of distractions shooting at us from all sides.

Where do we go from here to getting things done?

Acknowledging that you can’t do everything reduces the amount of stress on your shoulders. Now it’s time to get to work. You need to make every hour count. Every work hour, that is. If you have a job, your boss is deciding your tasks for you, mostly. However, if you are building a home business, it’s easy to spread yourself too thin by trying to please everyone and your mother.

Your priorities should be:

• Your health
• Your family
• Your day job
• Your home business
• Your social life

Taking care of your health first foremost allows you to perform at the peak of your abilities, and in the case of time spent with your family, to be in the best mood possible, to give your attention to the demands of whatever you’re doing at the present moment. In short, wherever you are, to be there, not just physically.

Taking good care of your loved ones is your why. Your day job allows you to put bread on the table, and it’s your main financial resource for your business when you start, and it is important to stay motivated until you can call it quits. As a matter of fact, chances are, you’ll perform better at your job with the self-growth you’ll go through while building your business.

I put the social life at the end, not because it’s not important, but because you’ll discover that surrounding yourself with other people who are building a business will probably be a blessing. It will encourage you to stay away from naysayers and cynicism. Lord knows how these can suck the life out of you. Of course, some if not most of your best friends won’t follow you in your business projects, and it will help you keep things in perspective. Talking about other stuff than building your business is good to recharge batteries.

Whether you agree or not with the life priorities I defined here, to be productive, you need to accomplish the next thing I suggest: write down how much time each of your life priorities take. We all have 168 hours per week. If you sleep 8 hours per night, you have 112 hours left for everything else. If you work 8 hours per day at your job, you have to add lunch and travel time, unless you work from home, so a rough estimate might be 10 hours 5 days a week. So, 62 hours left.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Make Every Hour Count.

Image courtesy of cooldesign at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Getting things done is possible, and it can be highly motivating.