The Most Important Thing Is

I'm relatively new to writing online and have spent a lot of time, perhaps too much, reading about how and what to write about, keyword research and article promotion. At times it can be enough to make your head explode.

As you can see I've been on hubpages for a little over six months now and haven't produced a lot of content compared to some of my fellow hubbers who have been here for a similar if not shorter period of time.

Why have I produced so little content?

I'll be honest, in the past six months I have done a lot of reading. This has been on a variety of topics from:

In doing so, I've been reading a lot about how to write online, but not actually doing any writing.

It's like reading a computer game manual and never playing the game.

As I said above the most important thing is content. I've concerned myself far too much with how other people are instructing me to create rather than creating.

I'm the armchair football fan who wishes he was a player.

How can I resolve this? Simply by writing, I guess this hub is the first step to my new found productivity.

What is the first thing you do when you turn on your computer?

• Check your Emails?

• Look for blog updates?

• Jump into your social networking profiles?

• Head over to the forums?

I've found these activities, while a whole lot of addictive fun, offer relatively little in the way of progress with you building your online presence. Once logged into feed readers or social networking sites you may find yourself, as I have, moving from link to link, browsing the information others have produced.

This does get me any closer to publishing new content!

If you only had 2 hours available to work, what would you do? Hopefully the answer is the most important tasks.

Doing the important stuff first will always yield the greatest benefits. If you start out the day looking to publish a hub for instance, you would be best served to complete the hub first before looking at Facebook, Twitter et al.

This is the exact opposite of what I have been doing lately. I have almost become obsessed with keeping track of what others have accomplished and as a result, I have not been achieving my goals.

I will not be doing any of the productivity destroying activities, such as checking emails, reading blogs etc. until I have completed my high priority tasks each day. This will ensure I maximise the amount of time I spend producing my articles and reduce the amount of time I spend socialising online.

Essentially I will set a finite time limit on my personal internet time.

What if you only had 30 minutes to process your emails and update your social networking profiles? What would you do?

This is a "no desert until you've eaten all your dinner approach".

Another of my issues is my constant struggle for perfection. I feel I have to write the perfect article first time with no need for editing.

This in a way has contributed to my lack of productivity, because the perfect essay does not go onto the page (or screen) first time, I get myself into a funk and stop writing.

To counteract this I am trying to adopt a different approach, writing what comes to me, leaving it for a period then reviewing and editing the piece.

Glad to get that off my chest

This hub was really a way for me to list my productivity issues and determine how I was going to resolve them.

If you have been in a similar position or are worried about falling into the same trap, I hope my venting off of my issues has been of help to.

As ever if you have any pearls of wisdom to bestow upon me I would be truly grateful.