One of the most destructive and productivity robbing things about working online is the easy access to useless surfing, email reading, game playing, and other non-profitable activities online.

You can have a brilliant product, a knowledge of the internet and how to make it work for you, and the willingness to spend several hours a day online, and still fail. Why? One of the biggest reasons is the tendency to wander while online.

So how do you control your time online:

Try these tips:

1) BEFORE you sit down at the computer, make a list of things you need to accomplish, and estimate the time it will take.

2) Give yourself a specific amount of time to answer email--15 minutes, perhaps, and learn to answer the important ones first. When the time is up, get to work on the list you made in tip number 1.

3) Limit the time you spend surfing. Again, 15 minutes is a good number.

4) When you are searching for new information about your field or about a new idea, know exactly what you are looking for, and be very focused. It is easy to spend 4 hours looking for new information and reading a lot online, but have very little to show for your time afterwards. If you arent finding what you want, wait until later.

5) Determine to take action. Once you have learned how to do something, just do it. Start on it. It is too easy online to just keep gathering information, but never get the real work done.

6) If you work at home, be able to balance your free time and work time. If you are working, dont stop every ten minutes to do something around the house.

7) At the same time, when you are not working, do not check your email every ten minutes. It can wait until the morning. A dangerous cycle is that you find yourself being distracted when you are working and also when you are not. If you can seriously separate work from home, you will be more productive when you work.

8) Commit to a specific amount of time online every day and stick to it.