How To Turn 8 Hours (Or Less) Into Your Most Successful Year Yet

A new year is here and 2008 is now in the history books. Did you reach your goals last year in your internet business?

Did you even have any specific goals? If not, it's pretty hard to know if you met them, isn't it?

This is the time of year when people traditionally make all kinds of life decisions - lose weight, quit smoking, get out of debt, replace their income from the internet and quit their job, etc.

Unfortunately, most people make these resolutions but never really create a plan to make them happen. The first month or so, there's enough excitement about the goal to keep at it but as soon as there's a bump in the road, they fall back into their old ways.

If that sounds like your typical results with New Years resolutions, let me share what I do to make sure that I can stick with my goals beyond the end of January.

The biggest success factor is to have a plan. Not just some vague idea of what you want to accomplish this year, but an actual plan that you've written out, with steps that you need to follow on a regular basis to make it successful.

I normally take the week between Christmas and New Years to assess my results for the past year, and plan what I want to do over the coming 12 months.

A large part of this is done the old-fashioned way - paper and pen. I get away from the computer - and out of my office if possible - and start planning what I want to do.

I decide what "divisions" of my business that I'm going to focus on over the coming year, whether it's infoproducts, affiliate sites, Adsense sites or some combination of them.

I plan out a rough timeline for new products and sites, and break those down into a series of tasks that have to be accomplished every week (whether by me or by someone I outsource it to).

I create a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly to-do list that I can work from (or again, outsource from).

I don't necessarily plan specific topics or products at this point, since I may not know what specific market or sub-market I'll want to tackle in six months. I just make a rough timeline for when I'm going to release things.

Once I get back to work after the beginning of January, I've got a list of things to work on so I don't wind up jumping from one thing to another aimlessly (like I used to before I started planning my year).

When new products are launched, I don't get sucked into the pitch and buy on impulse, or the hope that this is the "One". I know what I'll be working on throughout the year, and if a new product being launched sounds like it will fit into my plans, I'll consider it. If it doesn't fit what I'm going to be doing, I don't buy it - no matter how good it might sound.

I do this over the course of about a week, but I really don't spend that much time at it. If I wanted to lock myself away for one whole day and really focus on nothing else, I could put these plans together in 8 hours or so.

If you've been struggling to reach your goals in your internet business, I highly recommend getting away from everything for a few hours and actually planning what you want to do this year.

Come up with a plan, decide on the tasks you need to accomplish to implement it - on a daily, weekly, monthly and even quarterly basis - and then get started.

Put your blinders on for all the pitches that come through your inbox, and even start unsubscribing from all those marketers' lists who never really send you anything but another pitch.

You'll be surprised at how much more successful you can be when you get focused and start following a plan. It might not be as exciting as trying new things every couple of weeks, but I'll tell you - when you have your most successful year ever that excitement more than makes up for it!