Gettin' P.A.I.D

By

Wingnut

Of

Pepee's Pornn Palace

I have this hobby called "a-day-job" say it with me now, "daaayyyjjjoobb". Very good! All joking aside my plight is the same as many of the webmasters who are reading this article. It may not be a day job; it could be your children, an elderly relative you care for, back pain or whatever that makes your time spent "selling the good stuff" limited (or less than you would like it to be). We all have challenges to overcome in order for us to become more successful with our online businesses.

So what is an overworked, underpaid, sleep deprived guy/gal to do? You have to come up with a (or use someone else's) time management plan. The most important part of the plan is sticking to it, and if (when) you veer off course, you can bring yourself back on track. That is what has prompted me to write this article, I have a plan, as you will soon see, and I have fallen off "the wagon". This is my method to get back on track. Sometimes the best advice you can get is to follow the advice you give.

Some of you may remember this plan of mine from before, I know Pasta does! I came up with this plan the last time this "hobby" of mine got in the way of my "real job", and it worked well so I'll share with you all. So what is this plan? It's a very simple plan called "P.A.I.D". I'd like to think that this plan has in fact helped me get paid from the gains made by following the plan.

P-rioritize
A-ttack
I-mplement
D-uplicate

Prioritize - the first step in the time management plan is to spend some time and make a list of *all* the things you need to do, want to do, or would like to try sometime. Once you have your list, you need to put them into groupings of the "must", "nice" and "cool". You decide what goes into each bucket, but the things that go in my "must" buckets are tasks that will make me money (i.e. do the triple).

The nice things are tasks, which will become "musts" if I don't get to them soon (i.e. change out link codes for a sponsor that changed the codes). The "cool" bucket is for all those things you read or hear about that sound "cool" to do but can wait until the "musts" and "nice" tasks are done (i.e. upgrade to Win2000, or implement CSS into your site). Now that you have your tasks prioritized you can move to the next phase.

Attack - now you need to attack your list with a vengeance. The "musts" are costing you money if you don't get them done, so you need to drive them until completed. This should be a small list of items, if not you need to rethink the priority.

Implement - this is the fun step in the process where you get to implement the process of daily goals to complete your lists. Every day (I do it the night before) have a subset of your list that you will get done that day. Make it manageable list, so that you can feel the progress of your plan. In other words, if you have a triple of on your list to do and you know you can't complete 3 sites in a day but you can get 1 done, then put that on your list. Walk before you run.

Duplicate - at this point you should see the entire picture and realize you need to duplicate this effort until complete with all the tasks at hand. Attack, Implement, Duplicate until your tasks are completed. Then start the whole process over again. I usually re-evaluate the list every two weeks or so.

Things change, priorities can shift, and with this process (or one like it) you can manage your time in the best fashion possible to get the job done. You don't have to use this plan, it may not work for you, and coming up with the plan is sometimes half the fun. The point is to have a plan and use it … and to get PAID!

Wingnut