As a self-employed consultant, with my own pet projects as well, probably my biggest challenge is focus. While I can easily force myself to focus when I have a deadline or paying client, when I am working on my own projects or on my own time it is super easy for me to get distracted.
Semi-inspired by Nathan Barry's post about his first year self-employed, and the comments here on HN, It appears forcing yourself to make commitments to yourself as well as avoiding wasting time browsing blogs and checking email and social feeds, is the main key to success.
So, my new years resolution this year is to start invoicing myself and tracking every minute, and every missed-dollar spent on various activities.
Using my last paid consulting rate (as this grows as I sign each new client)I will calculate my time and costs associated with each personal project, as well as tracking the cost of wasted time.
The hope is that,"You Manage what you measure," holds true, and by noticing I wasted $1200 a day and spent another $800 on personal projects, will help skew that math in favor of more productivity, budgeting time and knowing the true cost of pet projects, and most importantly, Recognizing How Much Money I Could Have Made By Focusing On Filling my Funnel, Finding New Clients, and Pitching New Projects to Existing Clients (why wait for them to come to me?!)
Do You have any tips or advice for tracking and managing this Resolution would be much appreciated.
Also, the whole to-do list, or the pomodoro thing, that stuff has never worked for me. Hate to be so cynical, but your entire posts just reminds me of those bullshit promises I'd make myself when I was younger ;p