Time Management for Domainers

**myst woman** · 08-01-2009, 02:20 PM

The art of time management is never so critical as it must be for domain name professionals, or "domainers". When time is critical, a missed domain name deal or lost domain auction can tamp down a month's victorious site site promotion. Even intermediate domainers can lose a half day lost in Facebooking or catching up on a month's worth of unchecked Hosting popmail.

Domaining sucks time. Domain names wait for the pass and demand the domainer run with the football howver long that may be. Central tenets of domainer desktop and home office efficiency degrade as domainers struggles to sip that last drop of connectivity or bandwidth before lights out. Iphones and PDA's blurt domain Twitters and these vy with car keys for precious possessions not to be surrendered unless loss of life is imminent.

The sun never really sets on domaining, because people all over the world are logging on checking out their domain traffic, affiliate revenues, and and mobile computing get thrown out the window when the herd turns toward auctionville or there is a crisis spiking between domain partners or web development deal principals. the clock face hands can start spinning wildly once a full agenda of web site building, conference calls, auction timelines, and project deadlines hits. here are some tips for avid domaining without a safety net.

1. Reduce Your Click Volume

It sounds like a strange goal for a click driven industry, but for high efficiency domaining install shortkeys and heighten brevity per site. They haven't quite built the computer that does the driving for you. Open a folder that has agenda shortcuts right to the drop data or expiry report page in given registrar accounts online. In a time crunch every click hurts. if you need to check one more thing after your shutdown has initiated, you should be able to grab a glance before the machine turns off. (If your machine never turns off, see a therapist).

2. Write After Breaks

Insert large volumes of time into the domaining workday where you do not type. Watch domain webinars and seo youtubes for information when possible. Use this time as a rest stop to give your hands, fingers, wrists and arms a rest. Stab out your domaining email after these breaks, slowing down the urgency to normal typing speed. Don't thresh or pound at the keyboard. Domaining takes finesse. You are going to need those nerves later in the day or late at night.

3. Give to One Well

If you leave the computer for dinner/oxygen/Mad Men, leave one task for when you come back, and one task only. It won't be a rest if you have an avalanche of jobs waiting, and your brain will either relax so fully into escapism you can't recall pertinent details when you return to "work", or you will be cranking too hard on the domaining details to enjoy the break. Don't be that guy thumbing his phone 24/7, texting pointlessly, incapable of achieving anything, because he stopped practicing how.

Getting one thing done focuses all your mental resources on one domain task, and lets your mind seek creatively to solve problems, anticipate action items, and find solutions. Cribbing from domain task to domain task one day is fine, but make a habit of it and you grow to accept an attention span of your own creation. Dropped details are somebody's else problem. This attitude kills domain and development deals flat and kicks them into the negative integers. Handle one thing, and handle it well. Too many domaining tasks swimming together befuddles the issues and get everything done at 67%.

4. Evangelize on Your Own Time

Advertising and encouragement is good fun, but domaining timelines were not meant to be broken. If you come back from a name conference or domainers' trade show bursting with the high-energy pitches of 1001 sponsors, take note. Cool it and get back to work. Burn that euphoria productively geting base value tasks done, versus calling and emailing ideas and sites while partners puzzle at the lack of response on business drivers.

5. Change Your Startup/Home Page Once a Week

Sadly, so many people use the factory default home page or their email provider home page as their internet browser home page. But if there is a task you know you need to get to tomorrow, waiting for a result, and order update, or a bank balance shift, change your browser's home page so the first site every time you boot up will be the one you know you'll need at least once. Especially when domaining tasks are time critical, with open windows and updated options. This way a functional reminder happens, instead of assuming "you'll remember'.

6. Don't Use Your Printer As a Crutch

Thinking you'll always just print everything out is a time honored way to waste time later. At some future date, some critical data item you just engineered will be called upon. You will send 20 minutes plugging mail and drive files looking for it, or more. Have forms ready for web hosting signups, domain logins and maps of who you passed passwords onto in a notebook.By actually mechanizing the information to paper, you'll remember better than punching "print" and moving on.

This may save "only" 5-10 minutes" down the line, but on the day those 5-10 minutes may have dramatic costs. Keeping a cab ticking while you log on in a lead-encased airport parking structure using their adapter does have a price. Rushing through an international airport, taking your eyes off the road, using public computers for personal login and email searching, or a $50 phone call in front of many listening eyes and ears can be costly. Using conventions intelligently and taking steps to record password data, logins, and confidentiality paths may serve you well in legal negotiations and disputes as well.

7. Fitness Egg Timer

Nope, not kidding. Set this timer whenever you start a rote task like drop name searching or data entry that can go on forever. As you scrunch your eyes into the monitor, hunching shoulders and dropping slack your lower back, weakening abs, you are hurting yourself. Try to observe better posture, give your eyes far-corner screen breaks, and get a better chair. Schedule normal breaks, such as after auctons close or when interactivity slows on a domain forum.

When the egg timer goes off, get up. Do jumping jacks. Curl some barbells. Yoga against the wall, and stretch in odd positions that make the kids laugh. Run around the block or run up and down stairs. You'll survive longer at the screen, sleep better, and cut out that dratted 13th hour domaining malaise that mysteriously keeps striking. The "grump" factor will also diminish.

8. Change Up the Home Office

Very few domainers look at the way they work at home and find devices and space plans to assist that style. Most home offices are set up on right angled space limitations. The devices come as they are affordable, and usually stuffed around paper, books, mail, drop lists, domain portfolio printouts, and ornery assorted addenda of the home office. But new innovations and new inventions may exists that make the whole 'business environment" more productive for the busy domainer.

Domainers manage, through months if not years of this chaos the work continues before one day it will catch up with them. Domainers can drive entire business cycles before cleaning off their desk. Take one weekend and resort the home office. It's totally necessary but put all unexplainable things to keep get put in a drawer or bag in the closet, with a digital picture on your desktop of what's in there.

Do the filing. Just get 'er done.

9. Partner for Data

Build a club online of domain name industry colleagues who can share out domain expiry data and partner for doing certain domaining tasks weekly or different days during certain weeks. Yes, this takes trust. But if you sweat the small stuff every day, how can you build the big domain enterprises that make money and garner traffic? Trade off chores of ugly data stuff for fun domain development. The energy of the new domain stuff will carry you through the extra name chores and give your grey cells a break.

10. Delegate

Chewing off your hind leg to spare your domain ego doesn't help a domainer one little bit. Yes, domain services cost money and unanticipated charges against a domain auction, web site and domain name development projects can sting. But performing gut domain work on a site relaunch or editing code when you could be negotiating new contracts is fallible tasking.

**stevo** · 08-01-2009, 06:15 PM

Wow! Lotsa useful info there. I may need to rethink a few of my habits.

**myst woman** · 08-23-2009, 04:27 PM

thanks!

**Luke** · 09-23-2009, 03:14 PM

Thanks a lot!

**myst woman** · 10-15-2009, 12:28 PM

I need to review this from time to time myself!

**myst woman** · 10-19-2009, 07:36 PM

I also forgot to add in the magic twlight Zone stopwatch that stops time.
Not available in stores!

**RustyK** · 06-09-2010, 12:45 PM

I finally reached the bottom of the forum to add my comments and I totally agree about Time Management. By the way, yes I know its an old thread but at times we need to be reminded of how to use time wisely. I've jumped around from one program to another and next thing I know I'm burnt out just read things. This is a great thread that should be a sticky. Thanks for sharing.

**simon** · 06-09-2010, 03:46 PM

thanks for the Post.

**mgstudent** · 06-09-2010, 03:49 PM

Thanks for posting. I agree with a lot of what you are saying. At the moment I have a lot of books on my 'to read' shelf relating to time management and motivation - I think that these are the two big issues for domainers/web-developers.

The book I'm reading at the moment is called Time Management and it really is a great read (and only $10)!