Working from home can be both a blessing and a curse. It often is easy to get side tracked by the distractions of everyday life. Staying organized and focused is key to working from home. Buzz, author of Biz Threads, offers up some helpful tips in his blog article titled “How To Save Time In Your Home-Based Business“.
The most important tip to me is setting up time based targets. Sometimes I find myself spending too much time working online. I have to give myself a specific time limit to finish a project or I will spend hours upon hours on the computer. It’s important to make ourselves step away from the computer and take a little personal time.
We online entrepreneurs, all have different ways of running our small businesses. What tricks do you use to keep yourselves on track? If you have a specific routine that may help others like yourself, I’d love to hear them.
This is a very good post.Without a time schedule it is much harder to achieve the daily goals just because of the distraction.It´s much more fun to watch TV at the same time as you write a blog post:)
I try not to accept telephone calls during “business hours” at home. I simply pretend as if I’m not at home and am at work. I also force myself to step away and take a lunch break, too. If I pretend that I’m actually in an office environment and structure my day as such - I find that it’s much easier to work in that organized fashion.
I will implement David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach in order to keep things on track.
Like you, I make to-do lists and give myself time-based goals. I say to myself:
“I’m going to get XYZ article written by 10:30 am.”
“I’m going to take a walk outside after I finish up writing those lengthy email instructions — but not before.”
“I’ll have a coffee break once I finish up moderating all these comments and swapping out that ad code.”
And I give myself similar types of goals that keep me focused on achievements, no matter how small the goals. In other words, I focus on getting certain things done within certain time frames. Then I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something for the day, and not just put in time.
Even if I stray a little past the time goal I set for myself, it still helps to have a time goal because I work with a purpose and keep time in mind, so it makes me get more done.
Anita, I like adding the little incentives to get the work done that you speak of. Little rewards for completion - like a walk outside, a cup of coffee away from the computer - those are little rewards for a job well done. I like that idea. . .might have to put that in place for myself.
I do have my whiteboard in my home office and what’s written there are my tasks and subtasks with a specific period of time for each task to be accomplished. I try very hard not to miss any scheduled task because this will ruin my accomplishments.
-Jan