Roadblock #4: Inconsistency

The main problem with inconsistency is that it makes you lose momentum and momentum is critical to staying productive.

Forget the TV and video games. How many times have you found yourself thinking you were being productive only to look back and realize you spent 3 hours searching for and evaluating something you may not need until 6 months down the road?

Spending an evening finding 50 blogs to market to is a great way to feel productive, but do you really need 50, or could you get by with 10? Shouldn’t you have outsourced this task for a pittance to any respectable virtual assistant (VA)? In reality, the 4 hours you spent researching should have been 10 minutes spent writing up this task.

The hard part is that it sure feels productive to spend 4 hours doing research and it’s fun, to boot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get you closer to launching. 

Another common distraction masquerading as productivity is reading business books. It sure seems like Why We Buy, Made to Stick and Outliers are going to help you launch a successful product. But reading books gets you no closer to launching than watching Lost. 

If reading business books is a hobby, fantastic. But it won’t get you one hour closer to launch. 

How to Avoid It

You’ve likely heard of the concept of an information diet.

The idea is that most of the information we consume is a waste of time. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, the news...are all enjoyable to consume, but they have a tendency to offer a constant distraction from real productivity.

You can’t consume and produce at the same time – when you’re in high-producing mode you have to temporarily step away from your magazines, blogs, and other forms of distraction for a while. Being in the pattern of checking your RSS reader every time you sit down at your computer kills hours of productivity each week. Those are hours that could be spent building your product.

It’s not easy, but scaling back your information consumption will have a huge impact on your productivity.

Start by checking your RSS reader once a day and limit yourself to 30 minutes.

Limit your news reading and TV watching to X minutes (whatever you’re comfortable with). 

Start Small Stay Small...