I'm posting a little late tonight. I spent most of the work-day dealing with furnace problems -- not something that can be ignored in Nebraska at this time of year.

My furnace guy (a.k.a. friend who does furnace work, who I know won't recommend $1,000 in unnecessary repairs) is out of town today, so I had to attack it myself. To be honest, I enjoy doing this kind of stuff, except when it takes time away from other important things.

This morning, I smelled something, well, bad, coming out of the heat vent. After a little poking around, I thought my blower motor had burned out. But when I bypassed the furnace circuit and connected power directly to the motor, it ran just fine.

The good news is that it's only affecting the blower. So for now, I've rigged it to blow continuously, as long as the circuit breaker is closed. When the house has warmed up, I trip the circuit breaker, and when it gets cold again, I turn it back on. When my friend gets back tomorrow, we'll see whether I need to replace a $2.00 relay or the entire circuit board.

But enough about my furnace. What's the business lesson?

After getting the heat back on, I could have blown off work for the rest of the day. But I didn't, because of something I learned a few years ago (...and yet still forget all too often) -- never let a work day go by without making progress toward a major goal.

Let me tell you another story -- about how I learned this lesson. I was working on a new membership website. It was a big project, but not so enormous that it should have taken more than a few months to complete. But I kept getting sidetracked by other little projects, and in the end, it took me over a year.

By the time I was finished, I realized that if only I had worked on it every day, even just a little, I would have finished months earlier in the end.

Have you ever had a simple project drag on for months? Have you ever let a project drag on so long that it was obsolete before it was done? Work on it every day, and those things are much less likely to happen. Not only will you get something done each day, but you'll keep momentum, which makes it easier to get more done each day.

Reader Comment:
Antone Roundy said:
I finally fixed the fixed the furnace today. My friend came over a few days after I wrote this post. We checked a few things, but it didn't seem to be caused by what he thought it was. And diagnosing problems on the circuit board was a little beyo...
(join the conversation below)

I didn't get a lot done tonight. But I put a little time in on the current big project (an upgrade to SEO Content Factory). And I wrote this blog post.

Now you'll have to excuse me. The house is up to heat again -- time to turn off the circuit breaker to the furnace.