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I agree with Scott in his blog article Don’t Work 9-5 that the eight hours work day is broken.  My partners expect me to spend at least eight hours in the office workday.

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to work out of my office at home and I have found that consistently I get more done in much more shorter periods of time than I have ever done being at the “office”.  When I worked at the “big corporate office” I would spend most of my days in meetings or being summoned to answer questions or assist other with what they were doing.  All of my productive work came after everyone left for the day or on weekends at home.  I could in a relatively few hours at night complete what would take me days to do while trying to work during the day.

Does working long hours help you earn more money, no not is you are a salaried employee as a matter of fact the more hours you work and the more you accomplish the work work you will be given.  Can you work a second job to make more money, not if your employer’s employee policies prevent you from doing so.  How about selling the stuff you have, well you if paid retail which had anywhere from 1% to 100+% markup, so what ever you own you will have to sell at a loss.  This way does not make a lot of sense, this is not earning.  Yes maybe you have bought something that is worth more to them than what you paid for it, and take a look around and tell yourself how many things that is?

Start a business, OK great then write a business plan and figure out how much time and money it will take to make money.  It is not that easy this is another topic.

Extreme-win situation

• figure out what you do exceptionally well
• do that “one thing at a time”
• analyze time spent versus results, or the return (income) on investment of your time (ROI where R=income and I=your time)

Now the question is can you find some way to focus your actions on maximizing your ROI?

Not easy if your working a job that requires your attention to be on administrative tasks.  But let’s say for arguments sake that for a few isolated hours per week you could focus and be extremely productive on something that you have a passion for that could produce income, would you choose to do that to produce extra income?   Probability not!  Why I think is because you think it has not worked for you in the past, well I disagree, I believe we all can recall a task we did in which we focused our attention and worked on for hours (not noticing just how much time passed) and we completed it.  You need to find this and learn to repeat it in a way that works for you.  I can not tell you what that is, you need to discover this.

I can tell you an example of what I do using a very old model.  A project comes in and I need to determine:

• Who needs it?  Who is your client or clientele?
• What is it?  Does it fit with what I can deliver, or is it a product or service that you or your company can produce and deliver?
• When do they need it by?  How much time do I have to put this together.  I need time to build things in my mind, I need to be able to wrap my arms around it and understand what it is I am going to produce.  If a project is not due for weeks I may on occasion look at smaller pieces of it then in a short period of time put all the pieces together.
• Where?  Logistics where is the project located, what costs are involved in mobilization?  Where you going to get the product or service to market?
• Why am I going to undertake this project?  Are you after a one sale per one customer or repeating sales?
• Worth?  What is it worth to me? What is my ROI? Is it going to be profitable for your company?  Is your client going to make a profit from this project?
• How are all parties involved going to benefit?  If I am going to put my heart and soul into this project what am I going to get out of it?

This is all very simplistic, in business today it is not this easy or is it?

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