I’ve got a teenager, now 15, who’s one main chore in the house is to keep the dishes clean. He’s quite bad at it, to the point where the sink seems perpetually full.
It’s not really that he’s bad at it, but rather that he can’t seem to focus on his task at hand. It may take him an hour or two to get the dishes going (in a dishwasher, nonetheless!) because he is constantly distracted by the funny TV show or the dog that’s wanting some attention. And during that time gap from start to finish, you can hear me say several times “Focus son, focus.”
And so here I am in the same position, working on a new SEO account. Yet I find myself being distracted away from the ‘dishes’ to other seemingly important things.
Check email (even though I just did three minutes ago). Oh yeah, that client needs that change. Better do it now. No, wait. FOCUS.
Phone ringing. Friends on IM. New RSS feeds coming in from blogs I read. Must… stay.. focused.
Unlike the new digital camera I bought, my life doesn’t run on AutoFocus. Which really sucks 
If you’re a budding SEO consultant, I think the number one thing I can tell you to do when you sign a client is to block out a chunk of time, turn off all distractions, and focus. Put your head into it, think like the client’s customer, and start kickin’ ass.
