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Last time I was here I talked about the need for us as webmasters, content providers and/or affiliate marketers to be very careful with our time and to make sure that we weren't wasting any of it because if we're just doing 'stuff' and not actually making any money from our efforts then our businesses are basically doomed to fail.

In my last column I suggested that we needed to measure each project that we're engaged in to see if we were actually making money from it. It's quite a simple measurement to do but it can reveal some very scary facts because not every thing we do is going to make money for us and when we compare the money the project makes for us with what might be a reasonable hourly rate and other costs we'll sometimes see that we're working at a loss.

But we can be losing money even on projects that do seem to be making a profit if we're not careful with out time. In this industry most of us work online and, as well know, the Internet can be a fascinating place. There are plenty of distractions out there that can take us away from the work we're doing and we may not even notice that we're wasting our time.

For example, until a few days ago Steve would have Mafia Wars ... one of the Facebook games ... running in the background and every now and then he'd open it up and make a few moves. Within a week he began to realize that the game was holding more and more of his attention than it deserved and in the end he closed the screen and hasn't been back to it.

Fortunately for Steve he spotted what could have become a major problem before it really took hold and now he's back to making every minute count but what about you? What things distract you and what things are taking too much of your time at the expense of other, perhaps more profitable, things that you could be doing?

Many years ago when I first went to work I worked in a government department where time and motion studies seemed to be done every other month. Of course they weren't done that frequently but they were such a total pain that they seemed to be always with us and it was a real pleasure to leave there and not to have to face them anymore.

I know lots of you have probably had to face similar studies where you have had to justify your time to your boss and the very last thing you want to have to do is another one of those time and motion studies. But if you're serious about your business and you really do want to make the most efficient use of your time perhaps you need to take a note of what you're doing with your time rather than just presuming that you're working to full capacity.

Steve and I decided on Sunday that over the next week we would conduct a very simple survey of what we do with our time throughout the day. Now we're jotting down what we do throughout the day and how much time we spend on each task ... we also keep a note of the things that interrupt us ... like telephone calls, Twitter and even trips to the pantry for snacks ... and the time that each of those interruptions takes out of our work day too.

At the end of the day we compile those notes into a very simple work diary so that we can see what has taken the most time throughout the day. So far the figures are looking very interesting and it may be that I've been expecting a little too much of Steve because he does more than I realized and I keep on giving him more work to do. At the same time he may have been expecting a little too much of me and together we've both thought that we could achieve more in a day than we really can.

Along the way there are some interesting time-wasters beginning to appear too and that's something that we really want to investigate at the end of the week. It's amazing just how much time some non-productive tasks can take out of the day and it may be that we will be able to increase our productivity if we pay someone to do things like basic chores around the house.

As I said earlier, most of us left the regular working world and came into this industry to escape all those bean counters, pushy managers and clock watching experts and when we first thought of running our time survey we both thought it would be a retrograde step and something that may not have been necessary.

But now, we really are beginning to see some areas where we can make much better use of our time. We're also discovering a few tasks that we do for clients that really are bordering on taking too much time when we consider the amount that the clients pay us.

Now that it's my business and the time that we take to do the things that my business does it's all become very interesting and very enlightening and that will probably be the way it is for you.. Even if all you do is build free sites and galleries you should run a little survey on the amount of time you spend working and what you're doing with that time.

You just might find that you're wasting a lot of your time and you could be much more productive and so increase your cash flow if only you were a little more disciplined with your time.