Time Management for Casual Auctioneers by Alyzande

Today's quest post was written by fellow gold blogger Alyzande (AKA "The Gold Queen"). You can find her blog at TheGoldQueen.com. If have a guest post you would like considered for inclusion on Power Word: Gold please feel free to submit it via email to powerwordgold@gmail.com.

Of all the emails I receive asking for help with making gold, about a third are concerned with organising their daily routine or are just plain overwhelmed with all the tasks that a full gold making routine imposes on them. How to fit in all that mining, herbing, milling, prospecting, cutting, crafting, disenchanting, skinning, cooking, scanning AH, buying, flying to weird places to pick up pets or limited supply items, vendoring, transfering materials to your network of alts, never mind all those dailies, reading up for raids, getting your raid flasks and food ready, your daily heroic … I'm feeling tired just writing the list. Read on after the jump for a few simple and effective time-management tips.

Business Lingo Time! Time management is linked to productivity. Time management is priority management. So, identifying your time-constrained priorities will help you see which tasks are essential to maximising your productivity. In other words, concentrate on the urgent and important stuff. Taking five minutes to organise your day in advance is something most of us skip. But who would go to a raid without knowing where they're going, without reading up or watching a boss tactics movie? Five minutes before you start everything, sort out what you can fit in to your play time, and which important things you need to get done.

Divide up your day according to your attention span. Be utterly honest with yourself, because you're in charge here. How long can you do something before you get bored with it. I'd suggest starting with a 15 minute slot. Divide up your play time with 15 minutes spans. Then you can assign each task to a slot. 15 minutes of gathering, 15 minutes of scanning the Auction House and looking for good buys, and two 15 minutes slots for a heroic or battleground.

Alternate your boring slots with reward slots. If you do this, then you will be able to do even more. If you need a 15 minute timer, using my shortlink to this online “bomb”. I actually use it for timing my boring household chores! http://www.thegoldqueen.com/15m

Outsource by function. Two more business-speak words. Outsource basically means getting some other mug to do the work for you, and paying him. Function means a group of activities. In other words, find a guy to do your herbing, mining, skinning and farming for you, and buy the mats from him. Cutting out the Auction House is always a good step.

Group geographical areas together. If you're doing the Molten Front dailies, for example, then you might as well herb or mine or skin along the route. Then send all your greens to your disenchanter afterwards. Does it matter if you hand in your quests 20 seconds later than you expected, if you just picked up 10g worth of raw mats? And whilst you're there, Mount Hyjal also has a nice farming area east of the Spire where you can pop a Potion of Treasure Finding and gather gold, tiny chests, and cloth.

So, plan your playtime before you log on, have a reasonable idea of what you want to get done. Contract out your tasks you don't want to do, and group together your quests and jobs to complete them at the same time.

-Alyzande

(Alyzande is the author of the Pet Shop Miniguide (PW:G affiliate link), The Teenagers Gold Miniguide (PW:G affiliate link), and writes for TheGoldQueen.com among other blogs.)

Thanks again to Alyzande for taking the time to write this guest post for Power Word: Gold. She has been a long time supporter of the blog and we are excited to see her blog and guides continue to expand and provide solid gold-making advice. -flux

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