Copyright Chris Carroll and DirectSalesTalk. If you see this on any other site without my byline, please let me know.
Working from home has its blessings and its curses. Many people think that working from home is easy. You are just going to pump out so much work, it will be insane! Then reality hits… Your To Do list is growing instead of shrinking and you feel like a wild animal running in circles. Most of us that work from home have had those days and can relate. So, how do you keep your focus when you are working in your home based business?
Losing focus can come from many different things. Distractions would be number one, I would think. Kids need you, dog needs out, spouse needs something… whatever it is, your concentration just got broken. One of the easiest ways to deal with distractions is to set office hours. Sit down with your family and figure out when you will be working. During that time frame that they helped you set, they cannot bother you unless there is blood.
It is easy to lose focus when you forget a task or project and all of a sudden you have to handle it so you put aside what you have been working on, incomplete. Get in the habit of using your calendar and set yourself auto reminders, if you have to. Write everything down and make sure you are using your to do list. You have to know what is coming up so you can schedule your time appropriately.
Some people find that setting blocks of time for certain tasks helps them keep their focus on the job at hand immensely. If you have business calls to make, give yourself 15 minutes a day to complete those calls. Maybe you have blog posts to write. Again, set blocks of time for writing. Whatever your job consists of, break it up and set a timer. Learn to work within the time limits. What people find is that if they know they have 1 hour to get their newsletter completed, then they work like heck to get it done within that time frame and maybe even start on the next one. The time blocking goes for social media and email too. These are both big time and focus suckers.
Becoming more efficient at your job creates a lot less time spent jumping from this duty to that duty. Once you start a job, make yourself complete it all the way through. Soon you will find you are spending less time actually working your home based business because your focus is laser sharp and more time with the family enjoying what you worked so hard to provide.
Copyright Chris Carroll 2011
