Over the last couple weeks I’ve been making a conscious effort to increase my productivity, and I’ve come up with a few ways to really help myself work more efficiently and for a longer time. I’m gonna try to stay away from the usual “make a vision board, use crazy Internet filters, handcuff yourself to your computer, etc”, because if you have to do that stuff you don’t have any motivation anyways. Here we go:

Productivity Tip #1 – Have Cold Water in the A.M.

Haha, seriously. I don’t know what it is, but for some reason if I have a cold bottle of water right when I wake up, I’m ready to get going and almost always am in the office within half an hour. If I don’t, I lay around for an hour doing nothing.

Productivity Tip #2 – Look Good = Work Good

Just like golf right? If I wake up, take a shower, and put on some nice clothes, I get a lot more done than if I just wake up and throw on some sweats.

Productivity Tip #3 – Make a DAILY To-Do List

On my computer I have a Word document with dozens of things that need to be done, but the first thing I always do every morning is write down exactly what I want to get done *today*. There are usually five to ten items on the list, and by doing this I force myself to be accountable for the day. Instead of saying “eh I knocked a few things off the list”, I can look at my daily list and see if it is done or not. Then I know if I’ve had a good day or if I need to work longer.

Productivity Tip #4 – Keep a Clean Workspace

Right now my apartment is a wreck, but my office is clean. That’s probably why I get 99% of my work done here. I can work much better with a little space and without clutter everywhere.

Productivity Tip #5 – Close the Email/Skype/AIM

This one is a pretty common tip, but the worst thing you can do for your productivity is to leave your Gmail inbox open, Skype chat online, and AIM buddy list up. It’s way too easy to respond to emails/chats as they come in and lose your focus when you could have handled all your emails at the end of your day.

Time to practice what I preach – working on my new online craps guide today.

Forgot the business cards for the third conference in a row, so here’s what I’m going out with tonight:

I’ll definitely be getting some fat CPAs with these bad boys.

I’ve spent the last week or so moving into a new office, which is right down the street from my apartment. I went back and forth a few times deciding if I actually needed the space, because I was working pretty well at the library every day. However, I finally caved in and got it, and I’m really glad I did.

After I moved in I went to a furniture store to get a desk and chair, and was kinda surprised by how much nice furniture costs. Example – the first desk and chair I liked cost like twenty grand, and I was not looking to drop five figures on a desk and chair haha. I ended up finding a nice setup in their warehouse that another customer had ordered but didn’t want, so it was discounted 80%.  Here is a picture of the desk/chair where I work:

I splurged on the chair but am glad I did – it is 1000x more comfortable than anything I’ve ever used, and when I spend a lot of my day in it I figured I should get a good one. I also got a couple leather guest chairs for when I have “meetings” AKA never.

And of course, since I’m a huge Don Draper fan I couldn’t do without the obligatory bar and bottle of Canadian Club:

The space I got actually has two rooms, and since I wasn’t using the other one Chuck is sub-leasing it from me to run his online agriculture/dating/lobster empire.

Ever since I moved in I’ve been way more productive and working more often as well. I’d highly recommend getting an office.

Tomorrow I’m off to London for a week or so for the LAC. Usually when I go to these conferences I sleep all day and party all night, but really don’t accomplish anything. This time around I’ve got some good meetings set up that I’m really looking forward to. If you’re over there, hit me up on Skype (michael.wittmeyer) because my cell won’t work.

Got home from Mexico Saturday and am back on the grind, finally. I pretty much took a month off of work so it feels good to be productive again. Here are a few pics from my Mexico trip:

Good view from our balcony

Sick sunset

We went to see a bullfight, which got pretty vicious. Not something to take a girl to.

at one point we hiked deep into the mountain to see a rain forest, and along the way we came across some random guy cooking food in the middle of the jungle lol. Chuck bought a plate of meat off him for like $2 or something crazy.

Me chuck and some natives climbing the waterfall. We didn’t take the cameras out much so most of the crazy stuff isn’t here, but to say the least it was a fun trip.

PokerSite.org

I also finally got the new version of PokerSite.org up AKA the “everyone else should quit poker affiliating” version . I’m still working through a lot of mistakes and issues with the transition, but let me know what you think of the site anyways, and link to the site if you like it!

I’ve had the new Macbook Pro for a couple weeks now and really love it. I don’t wanna be the stereotypical Windows-hater but I’m glad I switched, everything is a lot faster and works just like it’s supposed to. My favorite parts are definitely the insane battery life (like 4+ hours while listening to music and working), the fast boot-ups (like 12 seconds from off to on the Internet), and Garage Band (been having wayyy too much fun with that lol).

I haven’t really been up to anything exciting lately, just working on my sites, boxing, and sporadically learning the guitar. The PokerSite.org redesign is taking longer than I thought, but I should have it up before Christmas. I’m really excited to get it up and running because the site hasn’t had any attention in like six months and has been slipping up a bit lately.

I also am moving into an office sometime this week which I’m looking forward to. The last few weeks I’ve been working either at my apartment or at the local library, which isn’t bad but still isn’t great. The office is only a block or two down the street too, so pretty convenient.

Friday I’m headed home for Christmas, and then am off to Puerta Vallerta for a vacation with Chuck and a few other friends. I can’t even imagine the amount of debauchery that is gonna go down on this trip, but I’ll take lots of pics. Catch ya’ll later.

I finally broke down and ordered my first Mac. My Dell laptop has been so-so lately, and the last straw was when my power port broke. Right now I can only use my computer by jamming the power cord in the port with one hand, and working with the other. Definitely not the most productive way to work…

I got a 15″ MacBook Pro, and am adding Dreamweaver CS4 (for Mac), Microsoft Office 2008 (for Mac), and Parallels, Windows 7, and Expression Web 3 (for Windows) so I can work on my sites on the Mac while I start transferring stuff over to Dreamweaver. Once that’s done, I should only need Windows to run online poker rooms/casinos when I’m writing a review. I also got the Magic Mouse, which seems like a really cool product.

Anyways, I’m psyched for it to come in so I can start playing around with it. I bought an electric guitar like two weeks ago, and GarageBand has guitar lessons built right into it, which should be way easier than using the cheap “Learn to Play Guitar” DVD I have now. Basically I’m going to spend the next few days watching Mac tutorial videos instead of working

PokerSite.org

I’ve got a pretty big update/expansion coming out for my main site, PokerSite.org. I’m switching everything over from .dwt to .php files, which will let me do some really cool stuff with the site, but also requires that I manually switch over hundreds of pages, which is no fun at all. The nice thing about it is that I’m forced to look at every page, and a lot of them were half-assed when I originally built the site. Now I’m re-writing a lot of stuff, adding new info, new sections, and when it is done it should be a much better site overall. I highly recommend doing a major update of your site at least once every year or two, simply because you will know more as a webmaster, and you can fix all of the stuff you did wrong initially. The new site should be done in another week or two.

Have a good Thanksgiving everyone.

What is it about airports that encourages people to bust out the Bluetooth headsets, talk ten decibels louder, and pace endlessly around the gate? I’ve got a prime example in front of me at the San Jose airport right now, I really want to tell this guy that no one cares or even believes he’s “up $100,000 on his Forex trading today”. Gotta start flying private…

Reflecting on the past month or so, I’m very happy that I left school. I’m in a much better mood all the time knowing that I don’t have some group project or online assignment that I don’t care about, looming just a few days (or hours) away. I’m getting more work done, I’m in much better shape (largely due to boxing, discussed below), I’m reading and learning more (kinda ironic), and I’m free to travel wherever I want, whenever I want. I’ve also been surprised at how people have responded to me leaving school – it’s been a really positive thing. I expected a lot of people to look down on me, but they haven’t. Not that I care.

Patience is Tough

Anyways, let’s get down to it. Patience is such an important trait in any Internet business, because the work you are doing right now probably won’t bring you any financial gains for at least a few months (minus a few things like conversion testing and negotiating better deals). The majority of our work, such as content development, domain acquisition, and link building, usually don’t make you any money for a while because they have to “kick in” with Google. This waiting period seems to be longer for new sites, and shorter for established sites where your work pays off quicker. All of this waiting around can be tough on any affiliate, but especially on a new affiliate who is waiting seemingly forever to make their first dollar.

In my experience, affiliating has always been a very cyclical business. I go through periods of expansion (where I improve my sites, start new sites, etc), followed by periods of true growth (where I actually make more money and see the expansion pay off). I don’t know why, but for some reason I don’t really see the consistent month to month improvements. It’s always as if I make a huge jump, maintain that income for a few months, make a huge jump, then maintain again for a few months. I don’t really see a problem in this as it always results in me making more money, but it can be very hard to stay focused during the months where my income stays stable even though I’m working hard.

Whenever I get into a rut during these “stable months” I like to think about how my sites looked one month or two months ago, and then realize how much they have improved since then. Since I don’t see any financial gains to motivate me during these time periods, I can at least take solace in knowing that my sites are better off than before, and should make more money soon. It’s still tough though.

Boxing Classes

Ever since I read Roger’s posts about boxing I’ve wanted to try it out. Unfortunately, the gym at my school didn’t offer it and I wasn’t sure where or how I could even get involved. After I left school though, I had to find a new gym and it happened that the new gym I found offered boxing classes. Funny how life works out.

Anyways, I’ve taken five-ish classes now and still don’t know that much, but I’m pretty well hooked. I’ve always been a pretty fit guy, but boxing is a whole new level of physical training that is unlike anything I’ve done before. Every time I leave the gym I’m completely spent. I don’t know if I would ever want to be in a real boxing match (I’ve read too much about concussions and stuff) but it’s fun to learn the sport and get in better shape.

End the Fed

This is Ron Paul’s new book about the Federal Reserve System and why it is leading our country on a downward spiral. I definitely recommend it to anyone who doesn’t really understand the Fed or how our money actually works, but understands that something is wrong with the rate at which our country spends money. He discusses why the Fed itself is economically flawed, and why it doesn’t matter who is running the show – it still can’t work. I’ve always been a big Ron Paul supporter and this is a book I would recommend to anyone. I just ordered a few more of his books as well as Atlas Shrugged and some of Murray N Rothbard’s books on the economy and the US dollar. I foresee some of my affiliate checks being used to buy gold bullion soon

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

How is the national debt going up by $100,000 every two seconds? These are really depressing numbers, and support my idea that our government is really screwed up right now.

GymJunkies.com is one of my favorite strength training websites, and I just saw that Vic added a new video that I found pretty inspiring:

Check it out! The site has a ton of other videos and articles, and happens to be run by Justin Goff who used to be (or maybe still is?) a fellow poker affiliate.