Time is passing

What's the best use of your time?

I sometimes think working on a particular project would not be a good use of my time, so I don't do it.

But then I don't do anything during that time. How dumb is that?

You don't always have to make the best use of your time. The important thing is to make good use of your time.

Sometimes it okay to be inefficient

I spent seven hours yesterday using the new feature in the Publisher Rocket program to find the most profitable keyword phrases for my books, and then I updated my Amazon book listings.

I used the new feature to see which keyword phrases were working for other similar books, how many searches a day they were getting, and how competitive each phrase was.

It was a lot of crunching numbers and analyzing data, but I came up with what I think will be some useful keyword phrases to help me sell more books. Was it worth seven hours of my time? I will know soon if I see an increase in my daily sales.

While I wondered if spending that much time working on the project was worth it, I thought about what I had accomplished the previous day (which was absolutely nothing). Being inefficient is better than doing nothing.

I see people here in Costa Rica cutting their grass with a machete. Using a Weed Eater or a lawnmower would be a lot more efficient way to do it, but using a machete gets the job done. Done trumps everything.

Back in the dark ages, when I was in high school, a sign below the big clock in the study hall said, "Time is passing. Are you?" Every time I looked at the clock to see how much longer I had to stay there, I saw that sign. It made a good point.

Here's another example

Each year, I get a new At-A-Glance weekly planner, and every year, I have to copy all my phone numbers and other information from the previous year's book to my new book.

That's mundane work, and I don't want to use valuable time on that task, so I wait until a time when I can't be doing anything else, such as sitting in a doctor's office or an airport terminal waiting on a flight to work on that project.

Last year, I carried both books around with me for six months before I found 30 minutes I wanted to spend on that mundane task. It was never the right time.

I was determined that wasn't going to happen this year, so I did it during the first week of January. I'm sure I could have spent the 30 minutes it took doing something more important, but sometimes it's better to follow the advice of Larry, the cable guy, who said, "Git-R-Done."

Bottom line: Consider being inefficient sometimes and get something done that's not the best use of your time. You might be surprised at how useful getting that work done will be to you in the long run.