I know the title is picked up from Jay Sean’s old album but does that really matter? lately, I have been facing a lot of productivity issues. I think of getting something done but for some reason I happen to loiter around and not do the work. I would really like to finish off all the pending work.

Probably, It is because I get distracted really fast and jump from one task to another. This approach doesn’t let me complete any work. At the end of the day, I have tons of incomplete work waiting to haunt me. I think it is going to require some work. Small but sure steps towards instilling a type of discipline and work habit.

I have always been the free flow kind. I don’t like dead lines. I work at my own will. But slowly this approach is working against me. In the time i spend being moody, work is getting accumulated. At the moment, the work load is at a very critical level and needs to be dealt with urgent attention.

Lets see how it goes.

Before we go any further, I would like to tell you that Soul Rewards is not a scam. They just gave me the Itunes voucher, I had requested for. It took a while filling those annoying surveys but I eventually got to 100 points to redeem my vouchers.

I told all my family and mates about the site and got tons of referrals. I got points every time they filled a survey. It was wonderful. I reached my 100 point threshold pretty fast.

I think I am going to be filling more surveys and would advice others to do the same and milk the cash cow. I am already 82 points and should get the rest 18 soon.

The main challenge when you work for yourself is being productive till your full potential. I personally have issues getting things done when I am working for myself. I think there is a problem with self motivation or may be distractions. But if you look a little more deeper, they both go hand in hand.

The problem of working from home is that no one takes you seriously. Sitting at home all day does not mean your sitting idle and neither does it mean your work is less important than people working on a 9-5. But people just don’t get it. Apparently, going to a office is much more glorified. My work may involve less physical labor, stress and dead lines. But at the end of the day its work and brings home the money. Just because you go to office and bring money home doesn’t make your money any more important than mine. Its pretty funny how people are just so used to the conventional. . ( Now the next step is to figure out how can we monetize that ? )

It kinda freaks my mom out that I might not end up doing a normal job and might do something sitting at home. But, it is the way it is. I am lazy and I like it out here on the internet. I rather be here than any where else 🙂

So Lets see… Here its how this is supposed to work. I finish high school with good  grades. These good grades will get me into a good college. I have to graduate with good GPA to get a good job. Good job will ensure that I’ll make a lot of money . All that money will take care of all my needs and once my needs are taken care of i’ll be happy and well-off.  This is exactly what we are nurtured into since very early age. Its kind of funny to see how rarely people actually question this norms and ask for who set it?.

You get much better perspective of things when you start questioning people around you about it. Most of the people I know are not happy with their job. But they continue working because they have responsibilities and there is no other way they can think of. You have one short life and you really want to do something you are not fond of for a living ? Second thing that startles me is the fact that most of them shy away from starting up. If you really good at some thing or know ins and outs of a industry, go out there and make some coin.

To be honest, I think its high time people get out of the ‘get a job’ jargon and think out of the box. There are tons of things you can do to make money except a job. They might be a little volatile source of income but at the end of the day you are your own boss. Life is too short to kill your dreams and do something you don’t like.

Recent set of events shook me rite from my grounds. A lot of things changed the way it shouldn’t have. I had not anticipated or accounted for any of this losses. Losses were significant, nevertheless. Losses did highlight one major thing : Keeping your passive income passive requires a constant ‘Active’ effort.

Ok, So here is the story. In last 3 months three of my sites got hit by Google’s panda update.  Initial 2 hits could be justified but the last hit which happened 2 days a go pissed the living shit out of me. As a consequence of the panda hit, the daily traffic count dropped substantially. Traffic dropped, revenue dropped. These were sites that made me decent income with little or no effort. Decent Income ? It made me 1 grand AED a month.  Can I fight the Panda back ? Yes, I can. But the first two sites were just not worth the whole effort. The third site is well worth the fight and I’ll take this freaking panda head on.

The basic thing you can notice is that my business is dependent on one basic resource called the ‘Google’. If  ‘Google’ gets cranky, I am f*cked in the ass.  Just FYI, getting f*cked in the ass pains. There are very few things I can do on internet without getting ‘Google’ involved in it. Lets think of it this way, Its more like a transportation business. You business is directly related to the petrol prices and petrol prices are volatile. It is difficult to control something that is not really under your control.

Now let me go around blaming my self. Once my sites get established and the money starts pouring in, I tend to get a little lazy. I tend to focus on other things. I don’t update my site often and don’t do things which I need to do on a regular basis. My five sites got hacked yesterday just because I never got around to update the software I was using. Luckily, there was a back up. Remember, I don’t update my sites often ? So that allowed me to use some really old back up without much trouble.

Cribbing about a problem doesn’t really help you in anyway. So WTF am I gonna do ? I’ll be working on this sites regularly to get the sites where they were initially. Is it the worth the trouble ? I don’t know. I wanna see how far I can push my self.  Plus, I ll be completing other projects which I am lagging behind on and taking backups every 30 days. In short, I’ll be working on a far more regular basis. I’ll try blogging daily or every other day. Easy money, is not really that easy and passive money is not really that passive.