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This is definitely an interesting time to be in business. You guys in America are supposed to be facing the mother of all recessions and here in Australia the people who control interest rates seem hell-bent on getting us to join you yet I don't think we've ever been busier.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not complaining about being busy ... it's just that I don't understand it. One of the basic things that happens during a recession is that people stop spending money on non-essential items so we should be seeing things really begin to slow down but it certainly doesn't seem to be happening with our business in adult or in mainstream.

February is traditionally one very quiet month but I think we had our biggest month ever in both areas and this month is well on its way to being another record. Now if that's not what you're experiencing and your cash flow is drying up then don't panic and don't quite ... whatever you do don't quite. Instead take a few moments to step back and see where you can better employ your time.

What parts of the work that you're now doing are producing the most income? If you can identify those areas that are still making you money then focus all your attention on those and stay focused on them till your cash flow is back up to a level that you're comfortable with.

It's very easy to get caught up with new projects to the point where they're taking up too much of your time. They're interesting and challenging and that can be very distracting ... in fact they can distract you to the point where you stop working on the things that do make you money. You may still feel as though you're working hard but if whatever you're doing is not making you money then you could be wasting your time.

That's why you do need to step back and take a critical look at what you're doing because sometimes you will miss the obvious and let yourself be distracted by mirages.

Even those who are making money from whatever they're doing there comes a time when they need to step back and take a close look at whether or not they can do things more efficiently ... or perhaps even change the things they do. That's something that we do frequently because it's so easy to focus on work that will make us money and pass on work that will make us even more money.

For example it's quite easy to think that a job that might pay us $100 a day for five days every week is something we should concentrate on while perhaps we should pass on a job that only keeps us busy two days a week even though it pays $250 a day. It's so easy to think that keeping busy always means that we're making money but sometimes that's not the way things work.

Several years ago now Richard Koch wrote a book called 'The 80 20 Principle' and sometimes I think that it should be required reading for all adult webmasters. Koch's argument is that while most people can stay busy they're not really achieving all that much.

In fact if we really looked at the things we do to make money most of us would find that 20 percent of the things we do make 80 percent of our income. The other 80 percent of the work we do only contributes 20 percent of our income. So if we can identify those things we do that make the most money for us and grow those areas of our business while ditching the things that take time but don't make all that much money we'll make even more money and not have to work as hard.

It's an interesting theory and one you really should be considering. Why work ten hours a day to make $1,000 when we could be working two hours a day and making $800? Why can't we discard what we're doing for those other eight hours every day and instead devote more of that time to what we've been doing that makes us the most money?

Obviously it's not as easy as it sounds to implement something like that. Discarding 20 percent of your income so you can focus on a principle that you've never tried before is not something anyone would be entirely happy to do ... let's face it, something like that can be downright scary. But the more Steve and I think about it the more we can see where Richard Koch is coming from and the closer we're getting to reducing our output in some of the areas that we're working in while increasing what we're doing in other areas.

We just can't keep at working at the pace we are now; we need to be able to enjoy the results of our hard work and that means that we really need to focus on what makes us the most money and takes the least amount of time.

If we need to focus on that then you do too.