Add this to your planner to succeed daily

I've been hearing lots of tips and recommendations from all sorts of places lately about what you should do to 'get ahead' or 'succeed' in your daily routine. Things like 'Positive Thinking', 'Prioritizing' and 'Delegating or Out-Sourcing' but after examining my routine, and reading some interesting blog posts on the topic of getting more from your day ..... I think I have found the answer.

Firstly, let me quickly run you through my routine.

A day in the life of an aspiring internet entrepreneur. (I work full time, and work the Internet when possible)

7am -

Alarm on my mobile phone goes off, I am usually already stirring by this time because my little one (14 months old) is generally awake and chatting away in her cot. Sometimes I might snooze the alarm until 7.15 or 7.30 at the latest - but thats rare. I'll jump up and make some breakfast. This is usually 4 slices of wholemeal toast with butter and peanut butter smothered over them. Drink varies, from sometimes a glass of Orange Juice, a cup of Sprite or maybe a Cup of Tea. (Pretty Boring, Sadly)

8am -

Since moving to this new town, my home is only 10 minutes from the city and my workplace. So I will usually leave home around this time drift off into thoughts about the day as I drive into work.

8.30am -

Work officially starts for the day. My role as a Vodafone Business Consultant generally requires a lot of 'out in the field' and customer visits; but as I am new, training, in-house customers and exams have been the norm. So upon arriving at 8.30am I will check my Bloglines Reader for the latest overnight happenings and articles (scan through, and only read the decent ones). Then I will check my Gmail for any overnight mail. (scan through the affiliate marketing stuff, see if anything interesting is there). I will also fire up my MSN Messenger at this time and touch base with business contacts and sometimes a family member from overseas will try and grab my attention.

9.30am - 5pm

This is prime work time. I am in a sales based role, so it's heavily commission based. Slack work means low pay, so I will try and make plenty of cold calls, arrange appointments and close any existing customers in this period. Will usually get a quick lunch break (sometimes drive-thru and sometimes home made (rare) in the middle of the day.

5pm - 7pm

With this being a small town, I will usually get home by 6pm. (This is a dream compared to my previous life in Sydney. Back home, 1.5hrs in peak hour traffic was norm and living miles from the Sydney CBD meant 7pm+ arrival times - not cool when you want to see your little baby before she goes off to bed each night) - Only upside was the earnings were double in Sydney... Man I miss the cash too. But here in my new town, this period is usually to have some dinner, spend time with the family and maybe sneak in a wine or a beer where possible.

7pm-10pm

Baby is usually off to bed by this time, I will be spending some time with my wife relaxing (but generally thinking of new ideas online. Ventures, Additional Blog Sites for Ad earnings, Traffic Gen, Social Networks and all the geeky stuff). My wife can usually tell when I am distracted, and sometimes I will get the Laptop out and work wirelessly from my lounge chair. Lately I have been getting tired around this time 10pm - which is really unusual for me. 11pm-2am is usually my best time to lock away and pound the keyboard; but for some reason, maybe its the alcohol, I have been tried and forced to bed around this time. I find when I eat less and drink more sugar based drink (Coke, Sprite, Vee, RedBull) it works a treat. (Mental Note to self: BUY MORE)

10pm-2am

Prime time. Update all blogs sites (15 sites) mostly turning adsense profit. Write some paid reviews for my 2 main blogs (smorty and payperpost based) and check out new opportunities in the internet world (stay tuned tomorrow for my latest video traffic gen tool discovery). But yeah, this is my main time - usually keep softdrink happening to keep me going and some upbeat music. When I stay up past 10pm my wife won't let me sleep in the same bed with her either -so it's generally sleeping on the bed in my home office. I do get a good night on my own, but miss out on the booty action - which is always a shame.

SOLUTION:

So this is my typical routine! What's missing? PLANNING! The key to succeeding, getting much more done and ultimately achieving goals - making more money, more time with family or friends or more time for your fun! Either way, you've got to plan your day early and live by your diary. Because something has less chance of happening if you DONT schedule it, and even for goals, they are easier to achieve when WRITTEN DOWN and SCHEDULED.

Are you already a diary user? Do you lock things in all the time? Does it work? What do you find helps you get more from the day and ultimately more success?