Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan? Part 3

Hey how’s everybody doing? I am going to apologize if I seem to ramble on at times.  It is late but I really wanted to get this post out tomorrow.

So far we have talked a little bit about goal setting and knowing where you want to be both personally and professionally (Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan Part 1 & Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan Part 2). We also talked about identifying what obstacles were holding you back from achieving your internet business plan and your life plan.

We are going to get into all of this a little more next time, so don’t think that I forgot about it!

Today I want to talk about tackling your personal goals and your business goals while keeping them separate in your day-to-day life.

I want to talk a little bit about one of the obstacles I encountered that I believe a lot of you encounter. I am talking about separating our personal obligations from our business obligations. I know it’s very hard to do when you work a 40 hour a week job, you have to spend time with your family and you want to spend time working on your Internet business. It’s a difficult situation to deal with. It’s difficult to grasp and it’s a difficult situation to overcome, stay focused and be productive.

In order to be successful AND lead your ideal life, you have to keep these two aspects of your lives separate.

I was least productive when I let my personal life and my Internet marketing life overlap. I guess my justification was if I could integrate these two aspects of my life, then I was working towards fulfilling personal obligations and not ignoring the business obligations.

Let me tell you it just doesn’t work that way. 100% hands-down, my wife can attest to this! If I am supposed to be spending quality time with her, and I’m not giving her my undivided attention, it is usually because I have my business on my mind and I just can’t think straight. I agree to things and forget I agreed to them. We engage in conversation, I answer her and five minutes later I ask her what she just said it. It just doesn’t work out. It hasn’t for me it, hasn’t for a lot of people and in the long run it’s not going to work out for you.

This is where some of that goal setting becomes so important. You have to have clear lines of delineation between your personal life and your business life, from the very beginning, to really help yourself stay away from that gray area of where these two aspects of your life overlap.

I know that one of my big mistakes recently was not having a designated workspace for my Internet marketing efforts. Now my wife has her own office in the house and I have another office in the house. I tended to do all of my work in either the kitchen or in the living room. I had a laptop with me at all times. I was never really focused on getting down to business.

At some point I realized that part of my inability to focus was the fact that I did not have my workspace clearly and cleanly separated from my personal space. Now, I admit that I still have a laptop with me a lot of times when I’m in the living room and spending time with my wife but I have completely taken control of the business side of things and I have an office dedicated to the business. I don’t even pay my bills in this office. I do nothing personal inside the confines of this room that I’m in right now. I know when I come here that I am here to get down to business, to focus and to work. I don’t have distractions. I don’t have things around that could pull me in different directions. There’s no TV. I have a timer and everything that I need to get the job done. That’s it. No extras. No fluff. No distractions.

The bottom line is: you need to have your number, you need to know where you want your business to be financially, within a set time frame and, personally, you need to start with the end in mind. In order to get there you need to have clearly defined goals of where you want to be in your personal life at the end of 2009 and where you want to be in your business at the end of 2009.

You want to be sure that you have clearly defined the routes you are going to take to achieve those goals and you’re going to keep these things separated. You want to make sure that you have your own workspace set aside so that you aren’t getting into this gray area where your personal life and your work life overlap. Do not allow these two things to mesh together. Set aside two hours every single day or four hours every Saturday and four hours every Sunday. I don’t care how you do it. Just have some sort of schedule that helps you stick to the business mindset and get things done. You will get it when you work hard for a set amount of time and then you leave all of the work behind and you go take care of your personal obligations. I guess that’s what it boils down to.

Until next time.

Read Does Your Internet Business Plan Compliment Your Life Plan Part 4

Related posts:

1. Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan? Part 5
2. Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan? Part 4
3. Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan?
4. Does your internet business plan compliment your life plan? Part 2
5. Are you seeing the progress that you would like with your internet business?