Dead Time
Posted On: 2014-12-05
I'm fairly sure that if you're in this industry full time then you probably don't have any dead time in your life. You're busy every waking hour of the day and if you could work in your sleep you would probably do that too.
As I was thinking about writing this column I was wishing that I could find some dead time in my life because I could fill it over and over again but there is none. I've been looking hard and I really can't find any at all.
On the other hand, if you're only part-time in this industry. if you're just starting out and trying to juggle your day job with this business then you might be lucky ... you just might have some dead time in your life and if you have then you need to find it.
I doubt that there is a formal definition of what dead time really is but if you have to commute to work by bus or train then you've got some dead time in your life. You have to make the journey but you don't have to do anything active while you're making that journey. You're just sitting there letting someone else do all the work and that's valuable time just going to waste.
I was recently reading a post by a guy in England who spent three hours on the train each day, five days a week, as he travelled to and from where he worked. While others around him read the paper, listened to music, slept or got social on Facebook he would drag out his laptop and write. In the space of just one year he was able to earn three times as much from his writing as he was earning from his day job.
So what are you doing with your dead time?
Now I'm not suggesting that if you have to commute like this guy did that you spend your time building free sites or galleries or even hanging out on adult Webmaster boards. If you did that you might end up having problems with the people around you and that's the last thing you want to do but there are lots of other things you could be doing.
Think of all those tutorials that you want to catch up on but have never found the time to read through them. Think of mainstream marketing blogs and other webmaster related blogs that have so much to teach you if only you had the time to read them.
And if you don't want to take your laptop or tablet to work there are always those great marketing podcasts that you have never had time to listen to. Download them at home and add them to your phone or mp3 player and listen to them while you travel.
But what if you don't commute to work? What if you're like me and live just five minutes drive from your office or where you work? Spend some time thinking about what you do each day ... could you rearrange some of the tasks you do so that you can find a bigger block of time that you can use more effectively?
When Steve does the dishes he has a podcast playing on his tablet. Do you spend a lot of time on the weekends driving the kids around or travelling to see family? Steve and I spend a lot of time on the road visiting clients and we rarely go anywhere without a USB stick full of podcasts to listen to. Maybe that's something you need to be doing if you travel a lot as we do.
Time is very definitely money and if you're going to work for yourself you need to be making as much positive use of your time as you possibly can. If you want to be full time in this business then you will quickly discover that the only person who pays you for your time is yourself.
Waste time or make poor use of your time and you lose money so become a miser when it comes to your time. Search for every spare minute ... reorganise your time so all those spare minutes can be grouped together ... and then find the most effective way to use those groups of minutes .
Just don't make the mistake of thinking that every minute of every day should be spent building and submitting. There are lots of other things that you need to be doing with your time that are just as important as building and submitting.
So what are you doing with your dead time?