Chris Jennings

I’ve grown a lot over the past year. I’ve went from working full-time at a dead end job to running my own successful online business – and making twice as much, working half the time. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of room for improvement but I have total faith now that I can do anything I set my mind to.

One of the toughest obstacles for me has been focusing. I’m sure I’m not alone, but I tend to have at least 3 “million-dollar” ideas daily and sometimes end up wasting half the day sketching out site designs and business models. I wish I could say that even one of them has gone anywhere.

It’s only recently that I have realized what a complete waste of time all of this really was. I have a bad habit of wanting to be a part of every startup that crosses my path, just incase it’s the next Digg or Google… but in reality, this is just like playing the lottery. I could buy 1000 tickets and still never win whereas if I would had put the amount of time and money wasted into something I was passionate about, I would have invested in myself and came out much better in the long run.

The idea is not to cut out all of your streams of income; it’s about putting more focus on your solid bases and saying “I’ll pass” when you’re plate is full.

There are a few things that you can do to help you focus immediately.

Sell off your surplus domain names

I know that you’ve got them. I do. Unused idea domain names are filling my Godaddy account like Rosie O’Donnell in tight jeans, while also draining my wallet on a monthly basis. We need to get rid of these and give someone else a chance to bring them to life.

Limit your availability on Instant Messaging Services

It’s not rude to put an away message up while you’re working. It’s likely that if you have friends that are “entrepreneurs”, you are bound to get a few ideas pinged off of you from time to time. For me, other people’s ideas easily get my mind churning a bigger and better idea… and unfortunately, that could sometimes end in another domain, another site sketch and another business model. Did I mention another wasted afternoon?

Focusing is just another way to invest in yourself. Spreading yourself too thin is much too high of a risk when trying to survive online business. Find something that works for you and STAY AT IT.

Recently while developing a blog for author Tim Ferriss, I implemented a CSS based menu that used background images for the visual navigation. One major problem when using roll-over menus, no matter if it’s javascript or CSS, is the fact that the browser will not load the “hover” image until it is initially hovered over with the mouse. Until recently I have made use of a few lines of javascript to pre-load the images, however, due to the fact that Tim’s book isn’t necessarily targeted towards tech-savvy people, there’s a good chance that a few older browsers will make their way onto his site.

The Solution

To achieve the same effect, without all of the Javascript bulk, I simply made a new class in my stylesheet:

.invisible {display: none; }

Then, I loaded all of my images onto my page (they can be anywhere). Then, I simply set their class to “invisible”. That’s all there is to it. No more loading flickers for Tim’s navbar. woot.