Eric Nagel

May 2015: Just 20 Minutes / Day

Eric Nagel

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Well, today’s May 1. One-third of the year is gone, and what do you have to show for it?

One of my goals last December was to update my Cloud Backup Reviews site. Sure, updating a site like that in December was a big undertaking, but the backups niche is busy right after January 1 (New Years Resolutions).

Guess what? It didn’t happen.

It’s a big undertaking: to revamp an entire website. In this case, a site whose foundation was build in 2008, and layers hacked on top of each other in the following years. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an entire day, or an entire weekend, to devote to updating a site.

But I do have 20 minutes / day.

If I can put at least 20 minutes / day into working on this site, then that’s over 600 minutes, or 10 hours of progress. By the end of May, that’ll put me at least 10 hours further than where I am today.

And what’s 20 minutes? Instead of watching some sitcom at night, spend that time migrating content. Or instead of sleeping in a little bit, wake up early and get that 20 minutes in before your day starts.

Last year, I used a similar technique when making the final push to launching Monkey Finger. I’d sit down at night, determined to get 20 minutes of work done. Typically, I’d have to force myself to stop working 45 minutes later (or longer) so I could stick to my morning schedule. Once you get going, you keep going.

In 20 minutes, I can upgrade WordPress, update my theme and get the colors and logo right.

In 20 minutes, I can copy over one of my cloud backup reviews, move the images and tweak the formatting (there’s 17 of them, so that’s going to take a while).

In 20 minutes, I can find a script to migrate the comments from my existing site to my new one.

But when I sit down to work, I’m not trying to get a review moved, or WordPress updated, or whatever task I have in mind. My goal is to put in 20 minutes of focused work. Turn off Skype, don’t look at email, or Facebook, or your phone. The world will go on, but 20 minutes later, you’ll be 20 minutes closer to completing that project that you just don’t have 10 spare hours to get done.

Print a May 2015 calendar, stick it to your wall, and cross off every day that you worked on your big project. Then on May 31, celebrate what you accomplished in May, and get ready for June.