Being a webpreneur is AWESOME!

Working for myself, setting my own schedule and not having to wake up to an alarm rock! I recently wrote about this on the blog, in 5 Decisions I Now Make as the Boss.

But it ain’t all peaches and cream (or roses, or whatever your comparison of choice is!). There are some drawbacks to this online business thing. Here are three of the most challenging for me.

1. My To Do List Is Never Complete

If you’ve been reading me long, you’ll know I’m a little type-A. I feel like I’m getting better all the time with “going with the flow.” But I’m still wired a certain way and I love the feeling of crossing items off my to do list – especially the last one of the day!

So it’s extra challenging for someone like me to never feel like my to do list is completed, but is actually growing more and more each week. Some of these items are urgent and/or important and others just seem urgent or important, but actually aren’t.

What I’ve tried to do is keep a rolling to do list and section off a piece of it for each day. Then I’ll physically transpose that day’s items to a physical to do list. This way I still get the satisfaction of physically crossing them off.

2. I’m Slightly Addicted to Email

This is why I still don’t have a smartphone! Once upon a time, I owned a Blackberry and I’d check it compulsively to see if that little red light was blinking indicating a new email message. At the time, it just had my personal email on it, so there was never anything urgent. It just had a weird psychological hold on me!

I tried to not start my day with email, but for me it doesn’t work! I manage two webpreneurs’ emails as a part of my VA duties, so I have to sort theirs in the morning and at the end of the day. I could skip mine, but since I’m doing this type of activity anyway for them, it’s really hard not to! My favorite part is hearing from all of you and checking for course sales.

What I need to do more often, is just close gmail from time to time. Treat myself like a client and only go through it a couple of times per day, rather than leave it open all day long and bounce in and out. As long as I get back to people within 24 hours during the workweek, this shouldn’t be a problem, right?

3. Online Business Is a Bit Bipolar

At least mine is. I don’t mean to be insensitive to mental health (because I’m not), it’s just an adequate description for the major up and downswings that occur. My coach and I joke that every other week I’m high and excited and then the next I’m on the bottom of the roller coaster and frustrated.

I think it’s partially due to #1. It’s also hard to know what I should be focusing on. Since I’m the boss, no one is telling me what to do on a daily or weekly basis. I have to decide and odds are, I’m not always going to be right or choose the best thing to focus on. Hey, I’m still learning too!

What I do know, is that I tend to fall more to the “workaholic” side of things, rather than the lazy one. It’s hard not to do with a business where I can work from anywhere and am virtually able to work whenever as well. Not to mention I’m the breadwinner, so there’s some added pressure from that.

In Conclusion

I think that sometimes people read my income reports and think that all of this comes easy or is easy. It’s not. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it – it’s just not all awesome, every day. (It’s still more awesome than my day job was though!!).

My to do list is never complete, I’m slightly addicted to email and my business is a bit bipolar. I have been working on ways to combat these challenges and will continue to strive to find the right (and completely illusive) balance between my work and my home life, but these challenges exist. They’re real struggles.

I hope that you come away from this post and realize that you’re not the only one that struggles. That there’s nothing wrong with you (or your online business), but that if it was easy, everyone would be (successfully) doing it!

It’s possible. I’m proof. But it ain’t all roses, not all of the time!

What’s your biggest struggle as a webpreneur?

Photo Credit: Matthew Wiebe via Unsplash