Lately I have been keeping track of the amount of hours I have been working and what I have been doing within those hours. I do this for two reasons: One) I can see how much work I am putting into my projects and where I am spending that time and Two) so I can see that I am truly getting work done which helps me move forward by keeping motivated. I have one of those “Fat Lil’Notebooks” where I keep track of my working hours and it never gets removed from my desk:

I spend anywhere from a half hour to six hours a day working, with the average day working out to 3 hours. I am finding that if I work less then three hours a day, I tend to keep it up more and not get burned out. Where I see I have stopped as of December 9th, was after 5 days of working 4-6 hours or more.

On the days that I spend more then three hours working, it is time spent on either doing research or development. This is leading me furthur into the mentality that the weekends should be spent on research and development (long and mind numbing) while the rest of the week is spent on content creation in the form of blogging or writing articles (short and more succinct).

Moving forward, I am going to do research and development (late) on Thursdays and Fridays so that I can leave my weekend days for what I enjoy most - socializing, brunch and watching hockey - while spending my weekdays working part-time on my websites - unchaining myself from my desk in hopes of finding that “sweet spot” of work/life balance.

I have to give credit where credit is due and mention that part of why I have started tracking my hours the way I have, has been from watching Tyler Cruz’s work challenges that he posts on his blog: TylerCruz.com

Being someone who has for the last decade been buying into the entrepreneurship mindset, I know just how challenging it can be being a one-person shop working from home with the only motivation being that if you don’t work, you could be starving and out in the cold if you don’t start making money soon.

What do you do to keep yourself honest, motivated, and working when you don’t have a boss cracking the whip at you?