A Plan

Things worth doing usually take time and perseverance.

Time every day over weeks and months, if well focused, generates a cumulative value. If not, false starts or half-explored ideas waste time and the creative energy that they will never connect with the ground circuit of the world.

A plan, designed ahead of time, followed, revised as it's contours become clearer, as things are accomplished and the territory of the region discovered in the searching and testing, brings a form to the time and effort, and a constant series of goal and milestones, checks and opportunities for reassessment. No plan is a free state, but a chaotic one. A good plan is simple enough to keep entirely in mind, open enough for adding temporary detail on parts that later form a foundation underneath the next stretch of the path.

Rules of thumb:

1. If you are working on something that takes time, count the time worked.
2. Make notes, keep receipts, compile lists, file hours under one or another heading. In a virtual office there is no other measure of progress.
3. Some things can wait, and some things can't. Prioritize from a list of choices. For something that will take five minutes, just doing it is simpler than writing it up and scheduling it, but if it's taken ten minutes and it isn't done, put it on a list and see whether something else on the list is a higher priority.
4. Mark list items with A, B, and C priorities. Those marked with A get done, B get scheduled, C get written down and left for when the time may be right, or never, because new As and Bs will be brought up in between.