I have a young family, full time work as a network admin for a company that rules a billion dollar niche, do one paper at university a semester on campus during work hours and am heavily involved with church responsibilities.
I feel your pain.
Besides my family, I also enjoy working out at the gym and doing IM in my spare time.
One thing that I've found super handy lately is really becoming targeted on what it is that I need to do for the day. I try to boil it down to the one most important task for the day and just make sure that after the kids are in bed I get that one thing done.
If your business model requires that you do multiple mundane tasks that take up lots of time, consider training up an outsourcer at easyoutsource.com or somewhere similar. Record short videos on what needs doing using jing if you can't find time to show them one on one.
I have a girl from there that does work for me part time and man she gets some boring monotonous work done for me that would drive me up the wall if I had to do it myself, all for $2/hour. Outsourcing will be your friend.
1. Take some time on your lunch break at work to be alone and write out your system on paper (if you can't do this, you're already wasting your time doing anything at all in the 45 minute blocks you mentioned).
2. Shorten each step down into single line actionable steps.
3. Figure out which steps need to be done by you and which ones you can pay someone $2/hour to do for you and make short videos on each of those tasks.
4. Try a few outsourcers out for a day or two letting them know it's a trial and more work will come based on their performance.
5. Give them the outsourceable tasks and you do your tasks and ONLY your tasks during those 45 minute sessions. Don't check your emails, don't read methods, don't stir you coffee, don't surf facebook, don't click on ads, don't check yourself out in the mirror, just stick to the task until it's done.
6. Evaluate your performance during 20 minutes on a day off once a week and find room for improvement. Ask yourself what worked, and what could work better. Change your task list accordingly for the next week.
Be hard, and be hard for your own sake but don't make a martyr of yourself. If you have to make up 45 minutes somewhere get up 20 minutes early and stay up 25 minutes later.
The main lesson from this is know what it is that needs to be done right now and either do it yourself or get it done.
I had this discussion a while back with my dad who is a compulsive WSO buyer. I asked him if he would like to go halves on a new outsourcer because I didn't have enough work for them full time back then. He said he would and then pulled out at the last minute because he didn't know what to ask them to do.
Until you know WHAT it is that you will do to make money and break that down into TASKS 1,2,3,4.... you're wasting your time doing anything online.
You probably make more than $2/hour, so even if you budget is small, save up until you can afford to pay someone for two days work and then trial them. If they suck, dump them and move on.
One final tip is to use travel time wisely. If you use public transport to go to work, then you can use pen and paper to plan. If you drive to work, a voice recorder works well, or a voice recording app on your phone even.
Hope that helps man, one father to another.
