An `online-newbie' is any person just starting out trying to create an online business. Now why should online-newbies wear blinkers? More to the point, what are blinkers?

In the old days when horse-carts and carriages were the vogue, the horse was made to wear blinkers (square flaps of leather at the side of each eye). This prevented it from seeing the sides and ensured that it would keep its eyes only on the road in front, thus making it easier for the coachman to bring the carriage to its destination.

Similarly if the newbie is to reach his or her destination (namely success at his or her new online business), he or she should also wear `mental blinkers'. The newbie should look neither left nor right but keep focused totally on building that one particular business.

This is not easy to do in the online environment, when there are literally thousands of oh-so seductive `easy-money' offers, `must-have' softwares, `to-die-for' coaching clinics, `tantalising' teleseminars and so on vying for your attention! Especially so when the ubiquitous `click here' link is found temptingly on every page, every email, every banner and every article (even this one)!

You start off googling for a specific something and when the page comes up you click on one link that looks most promising. Before you know it, you go on clicking link after link and 15 minutes later you can't remember what it was you were looking for at first!

This has happened to me more times than I can count. I start off telling myself: `I will not be distracted, I will focus on just one thing now' but within half an hour I am looking at some page online and wondering how I got there.

It got so bad that I could never finish in time whatever I started, whether it was registering with article directories or writing follow-up messages for my autoresponder or any of the other myriad chores that need to be done to run an online business. Jobs that should have taken perhaps 15 minutes ended up taking two hours because of all the side-tracking.

This was totally inefficient use of my time. So to make more efficient and productive use of my time, this is what I do nowadays:

Before I go online, whether to read emails or search for information, I jot down on a piece of paper a list of items I intend to complete during that session online. I also write down the estimated time I need for each item on the list. For example:

1. Submit Free Ads for Affiliate Projects 1 &2: (Estimated time: 15 minutes)

- Free ad company 1 - Free ad company 2, etc.

2. Register with Article Directories: (Estimated time: 20 minutes)

- Article Directory 1 - Article Directory 2, etc.

3. Write or edit Autoreponder messages. (Estimated time: 20 minutes) And so on.

Then I put on my `mental blinkers'. I focus totally on the task in hand, ruthlessly avoiding anything that is not directly related to it, while also keeping track of the time.

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