The Habit of Working
When you work outside the home, there are certain pressures forcing you to get up and get dressed, go to work and stay there all day. When you work from home, it can feel like there aren`t any pressures to actually make you work and if you aren`t careful, this can turn into sleeping late (if your children let you!), poor working habits and even playing hooky on a regular basis.
While working from home is certainly a flexible gig, you do need to be disciplined in it. The best way to ensure that you do what you need to every day is to just get in the habit. Pick an amount of time and a add it to your daily schedule. It usually works best if you work at a specific time each day, but that just isn`t possible for all moms. Use what works best for you and your family.
Now, commit to working that amount every day for 30 days. That`s how long it takes to build a habit, they say. Those 30 days are not going to be easy. You`ll find yourself looking for excuses and trying to find ways out of doing what you ought to . . . push through it and when the month is up, you`ll have a new habit in place.
The habit of working will quickly benefit your business, even if you are just committing to an hour or two a day. Make sure that you spend all that time on business stuff, not breaking it up into laundry, work, dishes, work, etc. since that is just going to distract you.
As a mom of two toddlers, I find that it can be very hard to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes (I think the whole short-attention span thing is contagious), so I prefer to set my work time at night, but other moms might find morning or even during afternoon naps works best for them. Do what works, but get in the habit of doing it.
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I like what you said about commitment, even if it’s just for a few hours. It really does make a huge difference to be committed to the task you are doing to up the productivity on anything – work related or home related. It’s the only way I can get my house to stay presentable, by committing 45 min every morning in my am routine, otherwise it goes to the dogs – and the cats, and the kids and so on and so on :0)
I also found a short attention span to be contagious, I’ve had one since August 27, 1990, when my first child was born :0)