Lack of focus

One of the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing, the freedom to set your own hours and schedules, is one of the biggest risks for new affiliate marketers. You’ve probably gone from parents to teachers to bosses telling you what to do. For most of your life, you’ve likely followed a schedule set for you by others. When you are your own boss and can set your own priorities and hours, oftentimes those hours evaporate after achieving nothing to further your affiliate business.

Successful people seem to work a lot more than other people, often to the point where it seems like they should be working 24 hours a day. How do they do it? Their secret is the ability to focus. The first thing you’ll discover when you’re able to really focus is that your ability to get the things you want increases dramatically.

Unfortunately, in our ever-connected lives today, many things prevent us from accomplishing the things we want to do. Being always accessible and always engaging in “on” behavior leads to an artificial sense of crisis. We are always afraid that if we don’t live all the time, we will lose something. How many times have you seen people walking in a park or sitting in a restaurant oblivious to their surroundings? Instead they’re burying their heads in the blue siren light of their phones, busily texting like their lives depended on it.

Getting what you want experts suggest that the first step to gaining focus and productivity is to be unreachable. Turn off beeps, bings, notifications and alerts on your devices. Keep in mind that not all of these distractions belong on your agenda. Your computer — and especially your smartphone — is designed and built to distract you. Not only does this alert kill your concentration and flow for the moment, but experts say it takes ten times longer to get back to where you were and refocus on what’s important.

You may want to check out an internet tool called StayFocusd, which is a free Google Chrome extension. You can read more about this and other Internet tools to help you, especially with time management, in the next section.