Thread: Have you ever felt like quitting?

You are defined by your rituals, Jay. Create morning rituals that set you up perfectly for the day ahead. Here's what my morning rituals are for this year...

-- Get up at 6am
-- Drink bottle of water (hydrate body)
-- Take walk around my local park (clear mind)
-- Exercise 20 minutes (boost energy levels)
-- Eat healthy breakfast (fuel the body and mind for the days work)
-- Read personal development material (motivation and positive mental attitude)
-- Meditate for 20 minutes (center myself and get focused)

This brings me up to 730am and then I start my days work.

-- My first task is to get my most pressing working assignments out of the
way (this can be difficult if you're not focused, motivated and energized)
-- I then focus on my list of tasks I wrote down the night before.
-- Tasks are broken into categories, i.e. 40% traffic generation - 20% content creation - 20% business management - 20% personal development (mindset)
-- I set timers for tasks and shut everything else down within that time.
-- Email - browsing the web etc, are secondary to anything else I do, but I allow for this ONLY when I have completed more pressing tasks. I usually check email twice a day - and only for 5 - 10 minutes.
-- During the day I take regular breaks and completely disconnect from my work.
-- I wear an elastic band on my wrist that I snap really hard when I notice I'm getting off track. I have anchored that "snapping" feeling to instantly tell my mind that I'm NOT being productive, and to, well, "snap out of it"

Before I go to bed at night, I write out my next days tasks and contemplate the day (was it successful - what did I get done, etc.)

These rituals keep me on track and help me get a lot of work done. I remember a quote/statement I heard many years ago that went like this...

"As soon as you stop pushing for what you want in life - what you DON'T want takes over automatically"

Have a great day.

Declan.

hehe. nice one Nalced!

Not at all... Because work hard and smartly is the key of success

That's very impressive Declan. I wish I could do all that.

It's the meditation that gives you your laser focus I suspect?

Are you passionate about the subject or topic? I have so much to talk about because fitness is my life. I work in the field and love being active.

It's not wrong to take time off when you are not motivated for a few days. You don't have to write everyday, you set the rules. That is the fun of owning a website. If it's something you are passionate about, motivitation will come back. Oh, and personally I think that if you are really passionate about a subject you NEVER run out of things to say. I haven't (yet).

You may have revealled more than you think with this statement:

...that little red monster on my shoulder is going to try to sway me from success sooner or later.

Often people fear they will not or cannot succeed, but almost no one really believes they are afraid of success. The truth is, however, that many people subconsciously sabotage their success because they cannot see themselves succeeding and are afraid to go there.

This is a topic I cannot explore in a post in any detail, but you can control this behavior by making a decision or two. If you make a real decision to work on a site for say five years and refuse to consider any other possibility it could go a long way toward changing this behavior. Also, if you follow through on that you will be so involved by then you never will. However, be careful what you commit to!

"Anyone have any wisdom regarding this topic? "

Yep!

If you like to jump around, then make that your business.

Create awesome sites and sell them.

darlene

Good post and I am pretty sure you are no where near alone with this. Like someone said above, it is ok to give the blog/website a rest for a few days if and when you need to. This is part of the benefits of running a website and choosing this path I believe. I got so busy this year that I didn't touch mine for a few months. It is ok. You just come back to it when you are ready. There is no need to shut it all down because you are not "feeling it" for a few days or even a week.

Want to know something really interesting with my case? I had already written quite a bit of content before I didn't touch my website for a month or more. When I came back and was ready to start working on it again I checked some of my keywords in google and noticed I had climbed the rankings in a very big way without doing anything except for letting my content speak for itself.

I think for myself a lot of the times I also have many different interests and so I have a hard time spending massive amounts of time all the time every day on one single topic. Which is what I have ended up doing nevertheless! LOL. I want to jump to something fresh and new constantly and although I have not completely figured it out. I believe it has something to do with the grass is greener on the other side analogy.

I have worked through a lot of this with my current website and am starting to see some results now! It is funny because in the meantime while continuing to slowly put content on my site I have come up with many other website ideas and am becoming glad now that I have stuck with this one instead of scattering my energy all over the place into many different ones. The funny thing is I have learned a lot more about everything related to websites and so now I can if I want to do those website ideas much better than I could have if I would have started them all at once. Or kept going from one idea to the next.

The grass is greener on the other side analogy has also applied to a lot of my life at times and I am now realizing with some things, you have to give them time and be willing to commit to them even when you begin to feel that bored with it feeling. You need a goal and set amounts of time you are going to give yourself to get to a certain place with a project. Do not be afraid of failing because you will get something out of it whether it succeeds like you think it should or not. The real failing is not doing anything at all and giving up just to repeat the same thing over again. The red monster is your fear keeping you from ever trying. We are truly our best friends and our own worst enemies.



Nalced, seriously what you said there is completely inspirational. I have been really working on time management this year as I find this is an area where I need work. The way you put that stuff I can completely relate to. I like how you word it and the way that you make it work for yourself. I have been slowly getting better at a system that will work for me, but man that sounds awesome what you do there. Ok I better go get something done........ Haha Have a good day all!

Now I'm on to something new - a topic that not only interests me, but also is a part of my life on a daily basis - and after a week the motivation is still there, whereas after 3 or 4 days on other topics I would get too bored to continue.

After a week the motivation is still there? Jeez, I've been working on one of my sites for years and it still doesn't make any money! Traffic is increasing, SLOWLY and my writing is getting better and faster, but I intend to stick with it because I have already made a commitment. In the past I've had gaps where I did not work on it at all but I always knew I would come back to it because I promised myself a long time ago I would.

Originally Posted by nalced

You are defined by your rituals, Jay. Create morning rituals that set you up perfectly for the day ahead. Here's what my morning rituals are for this year...

-- Get up at 6am
-- Drink bottle of water (hydrate body)
-- Take walk around my local park (clear mind)
-- Exercise 20 minutes (boost energy levels)
-- Eat healthy breakfast (fuel the body and mind for the days work)
-- Read personal development material (motivation and positive mental attitude)
-- Meditate for 20 minutes (center myself and get focused)

This brings me up to 730am and then I start my days work.

-- My first task is to get my most pressing working assignments out of the
way (this can be difficult if you're not focused, motivated and energized)
-- I then focus on my list of tasks I wrote down the night before.
-- Tasks are broken into categories, i.e. 40% traffic generation - 20% content creation - 20% business management - 20% personal development (mindset)
-- I set timers for tasks and shut everything else down within that time.
-- Email - browsing the web etc, are secondary to anything else I do, but I allow for this ONLY when I have completed more pressing tasks. I usually check email twice a day - and only for 5 - 10 minutes.
-- During the day I take regular breaks and completely disconnect from my work.
-- I wear an elastic band on my wrist that I snap really hard when I notice I'm getting off track. I have anchored that "snapping" feeling to instantly tell my mind that I'm NOT being productive, and to, well, "snap out of it"

Before I go to bed at night, I write out my next days tasks and contemplate the day (was it successful - what did I get done, etc.)

These rituals keep me on track and help me get a lot of work done. I remember a quote/statement I heard many years ago that went like this...

"As soon as you stop pushing for what you want in life - what you DON'T want takes over automatically"

Have a great day.

Declan.

This pretty much describes me apart from getting up at 6am and using the Pavlovian Conditioning with the elastic band!

I think meditating is a good ideas. In in our hectic schedules, people rarely stop and take time out to do and think about NOTHING. We've all usually got some nagging thing in the back of our minds which stops us from truly unwinding and improving our cognitive abilities as a result.

I like to perform stretches (especially on my wrist tendons) so I don't get any repetitive injuries from bad posture. These routines definitely help me in being systematic with my work and priorities. A yin and yang if you will...

I intend to stick with it because I have already made a commitment.

Commitment is a key ingredient in any success. I am amazed at the number of people in any business who determine, even ahead of time in many cases, that if they are not turning a good profit after a few months (or even less) they will shut down—whether a restaurant or whatever offline, or a website online.

Amazon didn't turn a profit for a decade more or less! Look at them now. The same with many others.

The most time consuming part of online work is the writing of good content. I have researched and written content for my personal finance site for over five years without even working on marketing and a lot of other areas (that after teaching and doing a good bit in the area previously). Note: not that it should take you that long. I have often worked 12-14 days in other areas most of this time and my recreation has been this forum where I have given more time than I have to my own stuff many days!.

I know that I can learn the other things like building my mailing list and have read about many of them and done a few things on a small scale just to learn how. But now that I have a lot of content at hand and can easily reapply it in different ways I am moving into more areas. It takes commitment for more than a few days to do all these things.

If it is not working for you, you just have to learn a little more and make a few corrections. Even a few mistakes can have disastrous results. Making just a few changes can make a big difference. It takes patience and persistence to succeed. No one gets it all right accidentally, all at once.

Nalced, that's really amazing - it seems you follow the rules of one of those time management books so popular out there, I've never seen a person who could handle all that. As for Jay, as far as I understand, you are an independent worker, freelancer or self-employed and that's great. Just it doesn't fit everyone. I am like that myself - I can't even read one book at a time - I usually read 3 or 4 of them because I soon get bored with reading a single one. So I quit my freelance job which I used to have and went to this company where I now work. And here no one asks you whether you're bored or not. And you know, after you force yourself to stay concentrated on something, the time passes and you see more and more results and finally you start enjoying more and don't want to change your object of passionate attention. Therefore, maybe such type of work organization will suit you better? Hope it was useful

I have stretches of time where I don't actively work on my site, but i've never felt like quitting and deleting the site all together. I've come way too far now to just give it up. Plus I don't want to.