Why my new office is responsible for much more productivity

I love my new office.

As somebody who always thought that they wanted to work from home for ever, I’m a little surprised that my office is working out so great.

This is probably the best productivity tool that I’ve invested in for a long time. I get so much more done at the office and so much LESS at home.

Finally, I realized that when I was working from home, I would do 12 to 14 hour days consistently, because the computer was there, and assume that I had worked the entire time.

But, actually I was just active, not productive.

At the office, I became more focused, getting more done in 6 to 7 hours, then going home at 5 or 6 PM to have dinner and spend the evening with my wife.

I used to stay up until midnight or 1 am, easily with my fingers on the keyboard trying to work even through a drowsy fog. I just told people I was a night owl.

But working from the office and being so focused I’m getting so much more done in less time.

And guess what? I am really tired by 10:00 PM and ready for bed usually.

But yesterday I did a 12 hour day at the office.

And it was one of the most productive and intense 12 hour days that I’ve ever had.

I thought I’d walk you through that day.

8:30 AM:

I got to the office. Made myself cup coffee and flipped on my computer.

8:50 AM:

I logged into GoToWebinar to join my Wednesday morning revenue accountability group. That’s a group of six people that meets every two weeks to recount our revenue achievement over the past two weeks and goals for the coming two weeks.

10 AM:

More coffee

10:15 AM:

I had a 45 minute meeting with Regina Smola about NAMS12 and did a little coaching with her about affiliate commissions, accounting and net profit.

11 AM:

I answered coaching emails from students for about 45 minutes.

Noon:

Met with Cathy Demers about a joint venture project we’re working on for the last part of July. Created a promotion schedule and to-do’s for each of us.

12:30 PM:

Wrote an email to my list about the new features in Simple S3 Video+ WordPress plug-in and scheduled that in my AWeber autoresponder.

1 PM:

Heated up my Lean Cuisine frozen dinner in the microwave at the office and ate it at my desk.

Started working on an article / e-mail that I would use in my affiliates toolkit as an email and a video.

2 PM:

Loaded the completed email in the affiliate tools page for this weekend’s Memorial Day sale on the Simple S3 Video+ WordPress plug-in.

Opened articlevideorobot.com and created the video that you see below from that article. That took me a couple of hours because I had to do a voice over and then edit it after I recorded it.

3 PM:

Answered Skype message from one of the instructors who had a concern about a video-only sales letter and requested a text only sales letter for the upcoming weekend contest.

I pulled the video script and created a fast text-only sales letter and created an affiliate link for him from that page.

4:00 PM:

Met with my bookkeeper and we went over the numbers for the first quarter. We hit the profit and loss statement and talked about our new accounting system that would encompass all of our financial picture including personal as well as business and our latest consolidations of bank accounts and corporations.

We scheduled an appointment for next Tuesday with the accountant at my office to go over future plans for the rest of the year, payroll set up and 2014 tax schedules.

4:30 PM:

Checked email and noticed a couple of bugs have been reported in the new version of the Simple S3 Video+ WordPress plug-in.

I notified the programmer of those bugs and what needed to be fixed.

Next, I did look troubleshooting myself to try to isolate the problem and determined that it was only happening on YouTube videos. I reported that back to the programmer along with a suggestion for an improvement by one of the users.

5 PM:

Set up my office green screen to record a video thank you for the people who purchased the Simple S3 Video+ WordPress plug-in promoting the MyNAMS Insiders Club as the upsell from that front end offer with a 30-day, $7 trial.

Got the video camera ready, but I didn’t have the right batteries for it or the microphone. Ran down to Dollar General Store about 1 minute away and picked up batteries.

I did a few video tests to make sure that the lighting, framing and green screen were set up properly. Then I changed my shirt from the T-shirt I was wearing with my shorts into the button-down blue oxford.

Shot the real video loosely using a script that I had created in about 15 minutes.

I did four different takes on that video shoot until I was satisfied with the result.

I opened Adobe Premiere for the first time (EVER) and realized I had no idea how to edit this video in Adobe Premiere with a green screen.

So I went to YouTube and found some short tutorials on setting up and using Adobe Premiere, editing a green screen video, and adding a video background. Took about 30 minutes.

Next I searched for free video motion backgrounds and found a site with one I liked. Added that to the video.

I finished editing that video about 7 o’clock and exported it to a really large MP4 file.

7 PM:

Then, I put the video in Camtasia and added the effects with the typography over the video. That took about 30 minutes.

Rendered that video, and uploaded it to Amazon S3, and created the short code for it in Simple S3 Video+ WordPress plug-in and edited a new version of the MyNAMS Insiders Club page to create a thank you page for the simple S3 video player sales page with the video added.

8 PM:

Packed up all of my video stuff, put my green screen against the wall. Sent a Skype message to Cindy to change out the thank you page. Closed down everything.

8:30 PM:

Called my wife and said I would be home in a few minutes. I had been at the office 12 hours working solid all day long.

I won’t do 12 hour days much anymore, because I can get more done in a 6 or 7 hour day at the office than I can in a 12 hour day at home.

Now, you see the glamour of living the internet lifestyle with your business…