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.

How does one determine which choice will make them happy? That is what the comments section is for!

photo: anyjazz65