"Focus is hard – at least for me. In business, there are a myriad of things that need to be done. If we’re not careful, this can end up being a quagmire that becomes so incredibly difficult to navigate we can’t even bear to think about crossing it. Even worse, the quagmire is seldom to do with our joy of creating content itself, so we end up losing joy in the thing that we started our business to do.

Segmenting my week and day though has helped to ensure that everything gets done and everything is given ample time to be done.

Each day of my week has been given a task that gets my complete focus on that day: Monday is research and writing; Tuesday is podcasting; Wednesday is content creation; Thursday is data, scheduling, and business development; Friday is mentoring and community. Early on a Monday, for one hour, I look over my online "empire" and I see what needs to happen that week. The tasks get allocated to their particular day.

Then the hours in each day have been separated into three blocks of 2.5 hours each: 8 AM – 10:30 AM; 11 AM – 1:30 PM; and 2 PM – 4:30 PM. And here’s the key: one particular task does not go any longer or any shorter than 2.5 hours. I work with focus.

Because I know that the other things that need to happen will happen at their allocated time/day, I’m not distracted by all the “things” – I can focus on the one thing that matters right now. I complete the task, take a half-hour break, and then get back to it with the next task. The bonus is if I finish a task before the time is up, I use that extra time as part of the break, or I move my next chunk of time forward and finish my day early.

This may not work for everyone, but for a systematic person like myself, “a day for everything and everything in its day” has helped to no end. How much? Well, 2.5 hours may not seem like much time, but I rarely get less done than expected because my mind is free to give everything to what’s in front of me knowing nothing will be forgotten and everything else has time to get done."