If you are trying to build an internet business while holding down a day job, raising a family, and maintaining some semblance of a social life, time management is not optional. It is the entire game. I have four kids, a full-time engineering career, and this podcast. I am not going to pretend I have it all figured out. But I have picked up some hard-won lessons about making progress on your online business when time is your scarcest resource.<\/p>\n
Here is the thing nobody tells you about building a business on the side: the biggest threat is not competition, bad keywords, or even lack of money. It is losing momentum. Two days away from your business turns into a week. A week becomes a month. And then you are one of those people who “used to be working on something online.” Time management is the skill that prevents that slow fade into nothing.<\/p>\n
I am going to give you ten tips that have helped me keep moving forward, even when everything else in life is competing for attention. These are practical, actionable things you can start doing today. Fair warning: this is a “do as I say, not always as I do” situation. I am constantly working on getting better at this myself.<\/p>\n
I know you have heard this before, but hear me out on the time management angle. When it is 1 AM and you have to choose between sleep and working on your website, the topic of that website better be something that excites you. This is not motivational poster advice. This is a practical reality. If your niche bores you to tears, you will never find the time. If it genuinely interests you, the time will appear because you will want to work on it. Choose a niche that is both profitable and personally engaging.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest time killers is sitting down at your computer at 11 PM and spending 30 minutes deciding what to work on. That is 30 minutes of your most precious resource gone before you have accomplished anything. The fix is simple: know your three most important tasks before your work session starts. Write them down earlier in the day. I use task management tools for this, but a sticky note works just as well. When you sit down, you execute. No decisions to make.<\/p>\n
This is the tip that has probably saved my business more than any other. Do something tangible for your internet business every day, even if it is small. Write one paragraph. Research one keyword. Respond to one comment. The point is to maintain momentum. Once you let two or three days slip by without touching your business, the gap grows and the mental resistance to getting back to work multiplies.<\/p>\n
This is one of the most powerful concepts I ever learned, and I picked it up from Sterling and Jay at Internet Business Mastery. If you are spending hours every week reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, and consuming courses that have nothing to do with the specific next step in your business, you are on an information binge. Stop it. If you need to write sales copy, only consume information about writing sales copy. Everything else gets ignored until that task is done. Just-in-time learning beats stockpiling knowledge every time.<\/p>\n
When motivation is low, nothing gets you fired up faster than seeing someone you respect crushing it in their business. For me, that has always been people like Pat Flynn, Cliff Ravenscraft, and the Internet Business Mastery guys. Find your version of that. Follow their work. When you need a boost, go read their latest income report or listen to their most recent episode. Let their example fuel your fire.<\/p>\n
You have more usable time than you think. Standing in line at the grocery store? Open your note-taking app and outline your next blog post. Commuting to work? Listen to a podcast that teaches you the specific skill you need right now. Waiting at the doctor's office? Research competitors in your niche on your phone. These five and ten minute windows add up to hours over the course of a week. Use your smartphone as a productivity tool, not just an entertainment device.<\/p>\n
I am going to be straight with you: I love cop shows and spy shows. Burn Notice was my weakness. But television is one of the biggest time sinks in most people's lives, and most of what you watch is not helping you build anything. I am not saying go cold turkey. But try keeping a log of how much TV you watch for two weeks. The number will probably surprise you. Cut it by 20 percent and redirect that time to your business. That could be an extra three or four hours per week, which is significant when you are building something on the side.<\/p>\n
Look for tools that eliminate friction in your work process. If typing is slow for you, try voice-to-text dictation. If you are a podcaster, find the audio editing workflow that minimizes post-production time. If you are a blogger, use a writing tool that lets you publish directly to WordPress without extra formatting steps. Every minute you save on process is a minute you can spend on the work that actually grows your business.<\/p>\n
I have a confession: I have a tendency to believe that the next productivity app or system will solve all my time management problems. It will not. Yours will not either. David Allen's Getting Things Done system is brilliant, but if you try to implement the whole thing from scratch, you will spend more time managing the system than actually getting things done. Take the best principles from whatever system appeals to you — next actions, two-minute rules, weekly reviews — and build something simple that works for your life. Complex systems collapse under the weight of a busy schedule.<\/p>\n
This is the tip that scares most people, but it is also the one with the biggest potential upside. If you are doing everything yourself — writing, design, tech setup, social media, research — you are limiting your business to the hours you personally have available. That ceiling is very low when you are working a day job.<\/p>\n
Start small. Hire someone on Fiverr<\/a> to do a task you have been putting off. Post a small job on Upwork<\/a> for a piece of design work or a technical fix. You will spend five or ten dollars and learn what outsourcing feels like. The key is to write extremely specific instructions and hire someone with positive feedback. Do not go for the cheapest bid from someone with no track record.<\/p>\n Once you get comfortable with small outsourcing tasks, you will start seeing opportunities everywhere to buy back your time. That is when your business starts to scale beyond what one person working late nights can accomplish.<\/p>\n I also had the chance to interview Jason Van Orden from Internet Business Mastery about his time management approach. Jason went from working 16-hour days to running a growing seven-figure business in two to four hours per day. His secret was not a magic productivity app. It was ruthlessly focusing on high-ROI activities, building systems, and going on what he calls an information diet.<\/p>\n Jason's elevator pitch for time management: stop consuming information that is not relevant to the single most important thing you need to accomplish right now. If your next step is choosing a niche, do not consume a traffic generation course. If your next step is launching a website, do not read about email marketing. Be laser-focused about what you allow into your life, and your overwhelm drops dramatically while your progress accelerates.<\/p>\n That principle — just-in-time learning — changed the way I think about consuming information. It is simple, it is free, and it works.<\/p>\n You do not need more hours in the day. You need to be more intentional about the hours you have. Choose a passionate niche. Have a plan before you sit down. Do something every day. Go on an information diet. Find inspiration. Convert wasted minutes into productive ones. Cut the television. Use technology smartly. Keep your systems simple. And start outsourcing as soon as you can afford to.<\/p>\n None of these tips are revolutionary. But applied consistently, they are the difference between a side hustle that stalls out and one that becomes a real business. Pick one tip from this list and implement it this week. Just one. That is how you build momentum, and momentum is everything when you are building an internet business one night at a time.<\/p>\nThe Interview: Jason Van Orden on Extreme Time Management<\/h2>\n
The Bottom Line<\/h2>\n