How many times have you heard someone mention that they work from home and you wished you could work from home as well. We’ve all wished that at some point. The traffic-filled commute and nosey co-workers make office jobs hard to stick with. But on the opposite side of the spectrum, people who work from home oftentimes long for the days when they could go back to working in an office environment.
Source: themogulmom.com
It’s actually funny because it’s the perfect example of the grass not always being greener on the other side of the fence. People who work from home want to go back to the office and people who commute to the office want to work from home. It’s more common for people to want to work from home though. Working from home definitely has more pros than cons but for those who are complaining about it, it’s because they’re having a hard time focusing on their work.
From your kids whining and your dog begging for attention to the TV being extremely loud and your nagging need to wash those dishes that have been sitting in the sink for the past day and a half, working from home is full of distractions and it can be hard to put your focus on work when you have a million other things taking fighting for your attention.
When running a home-based business, you, of course, will need to set yourself up with all the right tools and resources you need to achieve success. Creating a business plan, having enough money to fund your business, and finding a platform to host your website are all things that you can easily prepare yourself for but establishing a level of discipline to actually focus on your work isn’t something you knew you had to prepare for.
Nonetheless, lack of focus isn’t something that should prevent you from running a home-based business. Why? Because there are ways to make it work and people do it all the time… you just have to know the hacks that will help you to focus and hone in on your tasks at hand.
Staying Focused
When working for the big companies, it’s easier to stay focused on your work. Your bosses are in close proximity, you have meetings to attend, and constant deadline reminders, making it virtually impossible to put your focus on anything but your work. When working at home, especially if you have children at home with you each day, you’re going to need to feed your family, be tempted to clean something, and convince yourself that you need to watch a little TV to clear your mind… if you were in an office environment, you wouldn’t even be thinking about those types of distractions. If you truly want to be successful at running your home-based business, you have to cut the distractions and learn to focus on the business. These are the tactics that actually work!
Create a Home Office and Close the Door
When running a home-based business, one of the first things you need to do is find the place in your home where you’re going to conduct business… you have to create the right working environment at home. Ideally, you want to pick a location (preferably a room) in your home that’s away from potential distractions like towards the back of your home and away from the kitchen and living room. Once you find that room, always close the door when conducting business… by having the door shut, that will let people know that you’re working and don’t want to be disturbed.
Create a Daily To-Do List
Your daily to-do list isn’t like your “honey-do” list. Your daily to-do list pretty much the lifeline of your business. Running a home-based business can definitely be the breeding ground for pure chaos but by creating a daily to-do list, that’s going to give some structure to your daily routine.
You actually need to plan your day, the day or evening before. For instance, if it’s Sunday, you need to take 30 minutes out of your Sunday to plan your Monday. Then, by the end of the workday on Monday, you need to mark down everything you got done for Monday and transfer the remaining tasks that you didn’t get done to Tuesday’s to-do list.
Each time you mark off a task on your to-do list, you’re going to feel a sense of accomplishment. That feeling of accomplishment is going to inspire you to accomplish even more goals throughout the day, which in turn enhances your focus and increases your productivity at work. Because feeling a sense of accomplishment increase your productivity, people will engage in certain activities on a daily basis that gives you a sense of accomplishment.
According to the Huffington Post, meditation, volunteering, and facing your fears are all ways to feel accomplishment which can then push you to accomplish things in other areas of your life like work.
Hire a Nanny
Most home-based entrepreneurs think that they’ll be able to save money on childcare by working when their kids are sleeping. In theory, that sounds like a good idea but if you want to have a typical eight-hour workday like most people, that would mean that your kids would need to be sleep eight hours of the day and you know that’s definitely not going to happen!
You have to treat your home-based business like you would any other company you had to commute to. If you went into the office every day, you wouldn’t be bringing your kids with you… you would drop them off at the babysitter’s house or take them to daycare. You have to have that same mindset even though you work from home.
People tend to think that just because you work from home that you don’t have to work as hard because of the freedom you have but the reality is that when you work from home, you have to work even harder because you have more distractions and responsibilities, especially with kids. You don’t have to hire a nanny the entire week every week but if you bring a nanny in at least twice a week, that will allow you to get two days in where your attention can solely be focused on work and that’s priceless!