We take pride in North America about being extremely productive. We look up to those that manage to sleep 4 hours a night and always find new things to fit into their schedules. We feel good about all of those emails that we responded to and functions we arrived late at because we were at another meeting. Being productive is just such a positive trait to have.

I always thought I was productive son of a gun until I read a certain book. I then realized that I often just kept myself busy for the sake of being busy. You know because it’s important to be busy these days.

In the 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss sums up the idea of being productive the best:

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness– lazy thinking and indiscriminate thinking.

This is a tough quote to process at first. It’s sort of a huge slap of reality across the face. After a few hours I caved and realized that this was totally true.

What’s next? What if this quote suddenly makes you realize that you’re not all that productive?

I’m not going try to pretend to be some productivity guru or claim that I have the secrets to getting things done. I will just drop quote that I’ve decided to live by when it comes to productivity and getting quality work done.

What expression makes me produce quality work?

Do shit that matters.

It really is that simple. The next time you’re responding to redundant emails and typing away on the computer for hours, just ask yourself this: does this shit matter? As I started writing this post I asked myself this very question. After a few seconds I concluded that this does matter because I wanted to share two highly valuable quotes with you guys.

What do you think? Do you do shit that matters? Will this inspire you to be more productive?

Do You Want to be Your Own Boss?

Lately it feels like all of my friends with “real jobs” want to branch out to be their own boss. Most entrepreneurs take deep pride in being their own boss. I think it’s cool to be your own boss and all but is it all that it’s cracked up to be? I’m personally one of those people that will always at least hold down a part time job. I don’t think I could ever fully be my own boss.

What if you’re reading Passive Income Now and strongly considering becoming your own boss in the near future? A few things to consider for those of you that want to leave your job to be your own boss:

The buck stops with you.

You can’t go home at 5 (or stop working if you work from home) just because the work day is officially over. There really is no work day. There really are no boundaries at all to be honest. The boundaries between work/leisure time and home/office space become pretty much non existent. Just from running a blog I find myself checking email, stats, and jotting notes at the most random times. My friends will assume I’m texting a check on my phone when in reality I’m responding to an email from a reader. The thing with being your boss is that the buck stops with you and you’re ultimately responsible for EVERYTHING that involves your business. You can’t pass on the money problem to that annoying guy in Finance.

Long hours.

If you think your 8-hour shifts suck, just wait until you become your own boss. There will be days where you watch reruns of The Office all day. Then there will be days where you don’t have time to respond to a text from your best friend. You take the good with the bad and hopefully you understand that just because you work for yourself it doesn’t mean that you work less by any means.

The only beauty about being your own boss I find is that most people get so caught up in their work that they don’t mind and they don’t even feel like they’re doing “real work.”

Payment/money issues.

Most of us pretty much hate dealing with money. We want to receive our paycheck and move on with life. Anyone that has ever had to run their own business will tell you that a major cause of stress comes from:

How will the business earn money?

Where will the money come from?

Working for someone else you’ll never ever have to really think about these two questions. Now as your own boss these two questions will consume your mind on a daily basis. Are you ready for this?

Once again I want to make it clear that as much as I support entrepreneurship, I fully understand that I will always hold down some sort of a part-time job. Being “your own boss” sounds exciting and all, but I’m not ready for all of the risk yet.

How do you feel about being your own boss? Are you willing to give it a shot? Have you tried it?

(photo credit: theerin)

I recently took some time to look over The 4-Hour Workweek again. As I was looking through the sections that discuss getting your “muse” or income generating plan off the ground, I picked up some quality insights that I almost forgot about. Instead of just reading the points and getting motivated for 10 minutes, I figured that I would share the entrepreneurship tips with you guys.

Below are a few quick business tips for your small business as you attempt to grow it:

Don’t be the CEO/President.

It comes off as super minor league when you walk into the store and the only employee happens to be the President, CEO, and CFO. Running a small side business is no different. This is why I refuse to ever give myself the highest title within my own company or any other business that I may have in the future. As tempting as it may be for your ego, giving yourself the title of “President” can come off as totally lame.

Put up multiple contacts on the website.

This works wonders for strange reasons. The more employees in a company, the more major league it comes off as. I feel that advertises and other potential business partners want to speak with the person that’s responsible for a certain aspect of the business, as opposed to the president that’s busy with the vision and running the whole company.

Don’t put up your home address.

This one makes perfect sense. Think about it– how amateur does it look when a supposed business gives a home address? This is why I suggest obtaining a PO Box if you have to just to give your side business that extra boost of credibility.

Do you have any other quick small business tips that you can share? Are these quick tips useful or are they pretty much pointless to you?

Are you on the path to building passive income? Is passive income one of your major goals for 2011?

One of my goals for 2011 is to build my online income along with my passive income. Some may not see the difference between the two but I think there’s a distinct one. Online income is rarely passive. You often need to put in lots of effort upfront in hopes of a return down the line at some point.

With that being said let’s get to the important point: what should one be doing to improve their passive income this year? This is a list of the steps that you should be taking to reach your passive income goals.

Jotting your ideas down.

If you’re anything like me then the odds are that a million different ideas to earn a passive (or any kind of ) income hit you. My problem and likely a problem that many share with me is keeping track of these ideas. You can use a notepad and a pen or you can try out some sort of mind mapping software. Either way you should strive to keep a record of the ideas that hit hit you during the day. You never know when something amazing will hit you.

Ruthlessly testing ideas out.

Okay so you wrote your ideas down. What have you done about it? The next step is to test out the viability of these ideas and if they could actually work. How do you go about this? There are many strategies for this. It really depends on the idea. If you want to release a digital product you can check out ClickBank to see if there are any similar products selling out there. If you want to start a niche site you can conduct a simple Google search to find relevant sites. If you want to target something specific, Google Keyword Tool can always help you. All that matters is that you take a moment to test out some of the ideas that you write down.

Saving up money.

Most passive income strategies will either require a time or monetary investment. The thing is that time is money. So even if you’re looking for time, you might have to buy this time. This might mean outsourcing personal tasks in your life. This could also mean that you might have to work less hours at your current job. This is why saving money and investing it into your online projects is very crucial to your success. If you’re clueless on the topic, then it’s time to learn how to save money.

Working on it daily.

We often over-estimate what we can accomplish in a day and under-estimate what we can do over a few months. This is why daily focus and effort is required for all of your projects. Even something as simple as checking comments on your blog on a Sunday morning can go a long way.

There you have it. Four straight to the point tips to help you reach your passive income goals this year.

Will You Fail at Making Lots of Money?

We all want to make lots of money. I want to live in a fancy home with at least one luxury car. We all would love to be able to sleep 8-hours a night while making lots of money. Yet most of us never end up making lots of money. I must admit that I have failed many times myself. I fail all of the time. Whether it be an income stream or eating habits. We’re all bound to fail. Why not learn from others’ mistakes to learn from failures?

Below are the main ways that I have and many others have failed at making lots of money:

Chasing the next big thing.

There’s always something new to chase. When I was in college people always told me to that I should get into IT or into securities trading. Now many of these same people are telling me to get into index trading and conservative investing. Frankly I spent too much of my valuable time chasing the next great opportunity. When I finally settle with blogging I realized that this was what I really wanted to do. The money isn’t great but I sure do enjoy it.

Giving up too early.

It takes most bloggers 6 months to even earn a paycheck from Adsense. I can’t even imagine how long it takes the average business to turn a profit. Who really wants to wait that long? Waiting for results has to be the most mundane process in the world. Yet it’s often those that put in the time and effort for extended periods of time that experience the luxury of disproportionate results. These are the people that eventually make it big at something in the long run.

Not knowing when to quit.

Quitting can be very shameful. Quitting can also be an important part of growing. Think about. Think of all of the people that have quit their college programs to pursue a billion dollar idea (Google founders?). It’s much easier to remain at the status quo than it is to branch out and try something revolutionary. This is why sometimes quitting can be the greatest thing that you do.

Not hustling enough.

You’re supposed to sleep at 2AM, not work, right? Sure. If you really want to pursue your dreams you’re going to have to hustle harder than ever. I don’t want to promote any irresponsible advice about passive income here. The honest truth is that you’re going to have to hustle at some point if you want superior results.

Why have you failed at making lots of money?

(photo credits: ecks ecks)

Career vs Entrepreneurship

Do you want a steady paycheck or do you want to work for someone else? Passive Income Now is a chance for me to explore the crazy world of online income and a way to experiment with different career plans. Now that I’ve graduated from college I need to make an important decision: career vs entrepreneurship. Should I just be realistic and apply for corporate jobs so that I can start moving my way up in the world– or should I do the exact opposite and take some chances? This discussion will revolve around the idea of working for yourself compared to accepting a traditional career path:

Taking chances.

Are you a risk taker? I haven’t been until lately. I’ve been trying new sports. I’m always out and about meeting new people. I went from being fairly conservative to being the loudest person in the room at all times. I’m also looking towards taking some chances with my career. On one hand I can build something truly great and set a solid example for my younger brothers. On the flip side I can fail miserably and feel stupid for the next few years. With that being said, is there a such thing is a calculated risk? These are all thoughts that need to be considered when deciding on a career or a path of uncertainty.

Making Money.

How much money do you want to make right now? More importantly, how much money do you NEED to make right now? With rent payments, student debt costs, and the general cost of living, many people might be forced into working a traditional job right out of college. I’m fortunate enough to have graduated from college debt free. On the other hand, it’s always more comforting to know how much money you’re going to earn every 2 weeks. It’s much easier to budget your money and to plan for purchases when you have a predictable income. Unfortunately, with a predictable income you’re stuck at a certain level for long periods of time. How important is making money to you right now?

Stability.

Do you want a stable life? Some of my college contemporaries would prefer to jump right into a traditional career path. One of my friends was boasting about how he was going to start working a hectic schedule this January. He told me that he would only have two weeks of vacation for the whole 2011 and that he was excited about potentially moving up the ranks in the company. This is a great idea. At this rate by 25 years old, he can have a steady career with a decent income. There’s just two major caveats: he has to move out of town and he will rarely get to see anyone. Can you handle this? Not me. I enjoy being around my friends and family. I do want a somewhat predictable life but how much time can you dedicate to your interests when you’re always working. Is a stable income worth the trade-off of time?

After looking at these three factors, I’m really leaning towards the entrepreneurial path. Where do you stand right now? Traditional career path or entrepreneurship?

(photo credit: chatirygirl)

After not writing for a bit I’ve finally returned. Where was I? I guess you could say that I was plagued by passive income distractions. We all want to earn a passive income, but we’re simply too distracted with minutiae and daily nonsense.  Before I ramble on with my speech on productivity, let’s look at some passive income distractions that are hurting all of us:

1. Video games/television.

I’ve significantly reduced the time I spend on watching tv. However, I’m still not perfect. With someone always watching tv at home, it’s really easy to get distracted. You know how it all begins. You tell yourself that you will sit down for a few minutes and next thing you know, two hours have gone by. Video games and television are two huge distractions when it comes to trying to generate a passive income. Video games were eliminated a few years. Now it’s time to remove television from my schedule (except for UFC).

2. Information overload.

I’m pretty sure we’re all guilty of this. We feel that if we consume a lot of information that we’re on the right track. When I first started focusing on my passive income/online income, I think I read every single eBook in the world. I filled my mind with a 25,609 ideas. Do you know what happened? Nothing. I simply had too much on my mind. I then decided to take a deep breathe and start focusing on writing AMAZING content before I could worry about affiliate income or selling text links.

3. Being active instead of proactive.

Researching ways to make money online on random how-to get rich quick blogs is being active. Writing an amazing guest post for a top blogger or spending time on your next eBook project is consider productive. There is a major difference between being productive and simply active. The key here is that we need to learn how to realistically assess a situation.

Here’s your assignment: Take a sticky pad. Write down: Am I being active or productive? Stick it on top of your laptop or some where at eye level. Whenever you’re on the computer, take a moment to pause and reflect what the sticky says. After a few tries you’ll realize that you waste A LOT of time simply being active, when you could use that time to keep yourself productive.

4. Money consuming hobbies.

One thing I pat myself on the back for is dropping useless monthly overhead costs. I’ve kept the subscriptions that actually add value to my life and deleted the ones that are killing my budget. I find that we’re often distracted from generating an active or passive income because we have time/money consuming habits.  I know that I’m in no position to tell you what to do, but try to answer this: are there any hobbies that I could eliminate from my schedule/budget?

5. Visions of riches.

New blogger: I checked my Google Adsense account 18 times today and I still haven’t earned a penny! Screw this whole blogging and earning a passive income thing!

I know that we all want to make money fast. Sadly the dreams of making big money online is why many new internet entrepreneurs quit within months (or even weeks). If you want to make $5,000 in your first month online, press the X button, pull out a video camera, and make a sex tape with a celebrity. I really can’t think of any other way that you could make lots of money online with such little effort, in a short period of time.

Passive income will eventually come. Not today. Likely not tomorrow. It will come to those of us that stick it out and don’t give up.

Good luck everyone!

How does one decide which passive income stream to follow? It is already difficult enough to make up our minds considering the fact that we all likely have a steady/active source of income (full time work).

Whether you work full time, attend school full time, or run a family, you only have a minor fraction of your day to devote to your secondary income source. This time usually cuts into your sleep or time spent with loved ones. Therefore, a lot of though goes into which source of passive income we will decide to follow.

The Paradox of Choice- Why More is Less is an excellent book written by Barry Schwartz. I was going to do a full blown book review but I opted to try something else. I wanted to apply a few of the main concepts/theories to passive income and the decision making process involved.

New choices all of the time

Every time you go online you read about new ways of earning an income. You read about all of the different ways that internet entrepreneurs are making money (and lots of it!). You learn about emerging real estate markets. You learn about hot new stocks on the rise. There is a great wealth of information available on the internet that gives us about a million different passive income options.

Every day we are bombarded with more potential income earning sources. We have a difficult time establishing which income sources are truly important and which are merely interesting. Most of these new sources simply lead to information overload. Information overloads leads to us not making any decisions at all.

Missed opportunities for passive income

By running a blog you take time away from another passive income stream. Instead of writing for your blog you could be running an eBay store or managing real estate properties. Instead of investing massive amounts of money in real estate and closely watching the property, you could be focusing that energy towards writing an eBook on a profitable niche.

While trying to earn an income from blogging, I have seen many internet entrepreneurs start successful websites where they sell a service. Pat from Smart Passive Income wrote a few eBooks and did a few audio recordings that have been extremely profitable for him. These are all missed opportunities for the rest of us that are trying to earn an income through other sources.

Choice and Happiness

Do you want the stress that comes with investing a large amount of your savings into a passive income stream?

Are you willing to spend over 8 hours a day monitoring your blog?

Will you be happy with an income that fluctuates on a monthly or even weekly basis?

These are all choices and decisions that we make regarding our passive income that will ultimately affect our happiness.