Since I traveled to Thailand and Indonesia last December the location independent dream never left my mind. I have been reading a lot of blogs about internet business and listened to every episode of some very very interesting podcasts.

Then 2 weeks ago my wife and me went on holiday to beautiful Mallorca and I decided to not take a laptop and have an internet-less holiday. But I brought a hardcover edition of The 4 Hour Workweek and I read one third of it during this 8 days holiday.
I discovered that the book is far more interesting then I expected. I still don’t believe it is possible to work only 4 hours per week and make a living out of that, but the book is full of ideas on how to be more productive and stay focused on what really matters.
In my job I have no problem to stay focused, because there is a structure and a boss that I gave a commitment to. If I have that structure in place, then there’s no problem for me to deliver. But I have to stop procrastinating and learn to deliver too if there is no one actually waiting for it.

And then I read about Sebastian Marshall’s productivity run and I decided to have my own challenge for this summer.
I defined my goals for the next 2 months and the challenge is to stay focused to achieve those goals. The goals are not hard to achieve if I can keep focused.

This is the end of dreaming and the start of actually getting things done!

The Challenge

These are the actual goals I have set:

• Stay fit: I commit myself to do sports 3 times per week, of which at least 1 time swimming and 1 time gym. The 3rd time can be either swimming, gym or jogging. I was already doing 2 times sport per week before my holiday, so I guess it won’t be too difficult to achieve.
• Reduce information consumption: this is an idea from The 4 Hour Workweek that should help me to stay focused. I plan to use the rescue time tool to monitor how much time I spend on social networks and information sites that are not useful to achieve my goals. This time should be reduced by at least 50% by the end of August.
• Launch a niche authority website by the end of August. I already defined the subject, registered the domain name and installed WordPress. As I plan it to be an authority website I will have to write a lot of quality articles on the subject.
• Continue to improve my personal website = www.wouter.net: revamp the about page, do some linkbuilding, write more quality blogposts, etc.
• Write a blogpost every week (probably in the weekend) about how I’m doing with my goals.

And now it’s time to stop working for today and watch the second half of the European Football Championship’s final.