Are you concentrating on your MMAs? MMAs are an acronym I made up for Money-Making Activities. I find I need to remind myself to spend my time more productively. Before I know it, I’ve spent far too much time checking my feeds (which can be endless because when I get to the bottom there are new ones at the top!), checking my email, checking my AdSense, etc. All that can be useful for getting new ideas and doing research, and keeping in touch with my network is vital, but these activities don’t directly contribute to my income stream. I could be working on a post for one of my blogs. I could be working on one of the many tasks I need to accomplish as part of starting my new online business. Or my wife’s new online business. Or checking Rent-A-Coder for new jobs to bid on.
In other words, I should be doing something geared towards bringing money in, not wasting money by wasting time. So whenever I catch my attention straying, I remind myself, like a mantra: Get back to the MMAs.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to get back to my MMAs, and you do, too! 
Learn More
But if you want to procrastinate just a little bit longer… er, I mean conduct important research, then check out the following resource:
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity is a fantastic, highly readable book that will help you implement a system for literally “getting things done” that is natural and easy to do. That’s because the system is based on your own priorities. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to hammer square pegs into round holes to use GTD (as it’s known on the web). I’ve read plenty of other books on getting organized (haven’t we all!) and this is the only one I’ve ever read that seriously works. Honestly I don’t do everything in it, but what I have adopted from it has helped me tremendously. I highly recommend this book to everyone—especially if you’ve tried to get organized before and failed.
Technorati Tags: gtd, time management, planning, making money online, business
Michael –
Thanks for taking the time to come by the Freelance Folder blog. I can see we’re on the same page with your MMAs.
You should also check out David Seah’s “When Is Something Worth Doing” segment of “The Printable CEO” series here:
http://davidseah.com/archives/2005/09/23/the-printable-ceo/
Keep it rocking –
Dave
@Dave: You’re totally welcome, Dave. Thank you for doing the same, and for the valuable link to David Seah. I look forward to seeing how Freelance Folder evolves.
I waste a lot of time too. If only I could shut down the forums and stats I would probably do better.
@Day Job Nuker, I know what you mean. I could spend hours in Google Analytics. But I ask myself the question: how is what I’m doing right now making me money?. Cuz if it ain’t, then I probably shouldn’t be doing it.