Manage Your Time

Having been self-employed for quite a few years, I know that working from home can be distractive and it takes discipline to stick to a schedule. I remember starting my day sometimes with quickly putting in a load of laundry, emptying out the dishwasher, taking out the trash, and other chores, and suddenly it's close to noon and I have only checked my work emails and maybe done a few posts on social media. I also have pets in the house that can be distracting.

I actually took a few classes on time management and found them to be extremely helpful.

I plan out my days now and try to stick to the plan. I am out with clients sometimes, so some of my days become unpreditable. But the main thing is that I keep a work schedule and plan my leisure and chore time ahead. I have a calendar where I enter my tasks, my estimated time out with clients, lunch time, exercise time, and of course, there is leisure and fun time.

By nature, I am not really a morning person so I need to discipline myself to keep a decent sleep schedule and not stay up until the "wee" hours.

Coffee is a must for me right after I get up, but I find exercising in the morning, even if it's a brisk walk, helps me energize, clears my head, and just makes the rest of the day better. Just sticking to a routine helps!

Have your day planned out and review your schedule every morning, so you have an overview of what's ahead. Get your tasks out of the way, especially the ones that you tend to procrastinate on.

If you have to make calls during the day or answer emails, schedule a time and stick to that time frame.

Multi-tasking is great, but it can also work against you. When I write a blog or have a task I really need to concentrate on, I turn my cell off, get away from other distractions, put on my head phones and get to work. Again, I stay in my scheduled time frame.

I even found it to be helpful to find a place to go to where I can work. There are lots of little coffee shops around that offer free WiFi, and the library is a great place to work in peace and quiet. I have a few friends who also work from home, and at times we specifically meet up to write our blogs or accomplish a specific task. No chatting or goofing off!

Facebook is a great place to advertise and create traffic, but it is also a place where you can get easily distracted and spend time you could be spending on your business. I separate my personal FB account from my business account and set time a time for FB only. For example, on Sunday evenings I schedule my business posts for the whole week ahead. This is extremely time efficient, and it keeps my FB time limited. My personal FB time falls in to my leisure time, which keeps me limited there as well because I want to do other things.

Chatting with friends, especially texting, is another distraction I had to eliminate during work time. And my friends know that I am working and will onlyl respond when it's an emergency, but still leads me to wanting to at least read the message, so I keep my phone off for a long period of time until it's time to answer calls and messages, and then I may glance at the texts, and that's it. :)

Treat your business as a business where you are an employee to yourself. Schedule your chores and tasks, schedule your phone and email time, then turn off your phone, close all your other tabs on your computer, and work on what is on your schedule for the time being.

Even if you don't have fancy scheduler or calendar on your computer or phone, just have a notebook where you write tasks out, and then check them off, and if you don't get something done, carry it over to the next day. I still like the old fashioned calendar notebooks that I can carry with me, and I keep it open in front of me. :)

Don't forget to schedule your breaks, lunch, exercise time, and whatever else there might be and stick to them!

All the best to you and lots of sucess and making money!

Cheers! Vera aka Kat