Seven Tips For Work-At-Home Motivation

Considering a work-from-home business? Clients often say their biggest fear is loss of momentum. Here are seven tips to keep yourself motivated and productive.


(1) Build structure into your day.


Create a schedule and To Do list every evening for the next day, before you sign off for the day. (And yes – it is important to sign off, even if you return later to complete a project.) Include breaks and email reading time.


(2) Define goals by numbers ("write 1000 words") instead of time ("2 hours on Mega account"). One of the joys of working at home is you get to quit when you're finished ahead of schedule.


(3) Train friends and neighbors to respect your working hours.


Clients tell me about neighbors who say things like, "I told the UPS truck to leave the package at your house since you're always home." Discourage phone calls with a prepared response, like "I will call you after four o'clock today." You will be tested. Prepare to hang tough.


(4) Get the family on board.


Deal with their concerns before you start and be prepared to show how you are creating a win-win situation. Clarify what counts as an emergency – a valid reason to interrupt while you are working - and what can wait till dinnertime.


(5) Build breaks into your schedule.


When I started my own business, I was warned, "Plan to get out of the house! Otherwise you'll never leave your desk."


Frankly, I didn't get it.


Why wouldn't I take breaks? Now as I find myself answering just one more email, or adding two more paragraphs to an article, I see the clock move and realize I must stop if I want to get to the gym or the store before closing time.


Bonus Tip: A dog will force you to get moving, no matter what else is going on in your life.


(6) Make promises you will be motivated to keep.


My weekly ezine motivates me to write at least one article a week. You may be energized by company and client deadlines.


As your responsibilities grow, you will tend to accumulate more and more "real" deadlines and it's easier to stay motivated. But in the early stages, you're isolated, you're working hard and results don't appear immediately. That's why some people hire coaches and consultants to create accountability.


(7) Give yourself time to test your commitment.


Not everyone enjoys the work-at-home option. My clients tell me they need six to twelve months to decide how they are responding to this arrangement. You may decide to return to a workplace where you can see real people everyday. Or you may get hooked on having a dog-friendly, gossip-free workplace where you can open the windows all year round.

Working From Home

Home Sweet Home?


The majority of people who start small businesses do so by using their homes as offices. This makes a great deal of sense when you consider the cost of leasing even a small office. If you’re lucky enough to have an extra room for an office, you’ll find that your life will be a lot easier than if you are forced to use your bedroom. Those people with studio apartments have it worse because wherever they walk for a moment of relaxation; they are still in their office. Though there are many tax advantages to using a portion of your home as an office, there are many emotional and mental disadvantages and these must be strongly considered before setting up shop at home. If you are young and living at home, or if you are married with children, either way, you will have challenges.


For instance, if you’re the type of person who likes to grab an extra few minutes of sleep in the morning, if you’re the type of person who likes to press the “snooze” button every ten minutes just to squeeze in another couple of minutes of rest, then just try to imagine the trouble you’ll have getting out of bed when you have to stay home to work.


Hey, what’s your rush when you’re already at the office, right? Well, if you were a procrastinator before working at home, you’ll become a bigger and worse procrastinator after a few weeks of self-employment in your bedroom. Without constant motivation to keep moving, you will rapidly find yourself in a rut. So, what’s your motivation to get to work? Simple. If you don’t get out of bed to start work, then you may not have a bed to lie in much longer!


The flip-side to this problem is getting yourself so involved in your work that you do not know how to shut off your energy and stop working at the end of your day. If by chance you bypass this problem, you may have the pleasure of making a new friend – insomnia. With no private place to unwind at the end of the day, you may find yourself staring at the four walls every night as you lie in bed. A bed can become a comfortable place to work, but such actions also act on the unconscious; your mind begins to relate working with your bedroom. The new result is hyperactivity. You become a workaholic, and all you think about is work.


Though you want to maintain a certain degree of being hard on yourself, you do not want to overdo it, so be careful in how and where you set up your home office. If you have a spare room or den, use it instead of your bedroom. If not, be prepared for some new and interesting emotional and physical problems to pop up.


What's The Matter With Kids Today?


I've had the good fortune of working at home twice in my career thus far, first when I lived at home with my Mom when I was in my early 20's, and then more recently when I retired in 2000.


My Mom never understood what I was doing working in my bedroom at all hours of the night. Years later, a similar problem occurred when I worked at home when my children were still very young. They didn't understand why Dad was home either. They supposed it was so I could play with them! Wrong!


Whether you are dealing with parents, girlfriends, wives or your children, you need to establish some ground rules for the home office. You need to determine your work hours (you can be flexible here), your breaks (lunch with loved ones), acceptable interruptions (hugs and kisses), your tolerance for noise, and play time (for you and for them).

Home Business, What's So Great About It?

Home Business allows you more time to do what you want.


Home Business gives you more freedom i.e. no more 9-5 job.


Because a Home Business is well... at Home, you don't have to travel far to get there.


Just come down stairs in your pajamas and get to work right there and then. It's so convenient.
What is this article about?


Basically this is about starting a Home Business, what's involved, what options there are, how much it can cost etc.


I have already described the advantages of having a Home Based Business, so now we will discuss what is involved in starting one up.


When you start working for yourself there are several things you must take into consideration.
How much can I afford to spend on advertising, materials and other costs, can I afford to lose the money I am going to put into this business, where will I get finance from? And a million other things.


So I will break this down into many small chunks which will make it much easier to digest.
How much money will I need to start this up?


That is entirely dependant upon you and your goals. You should only invest as much money as you can afford to lose, this way, if everything goes wrong you can still live without too much interference.


That aside you must think how much you are going to spend on advertising. To work this out, you should take all of your costs and assign them a percentage of your finance which you will put into them. For example, if you had $10,000 to start your Business, you could assign 10% to advertising depending on how much everything else costs.


In my opinion you should work out your initial costs first, like rent and materials for example.
Then you can take what's left over and assign it to whatever else you want to spend the money on afterwards.


How can I tell if I can afford to lose the money I invest in my Business?


Very simply estimate the most that the business will cost you and assume that it wont make any money at all for a month, obviously this will be a big loss, but it will give you an idea of what COULD happen if your very unlucky.


If it looks like way more than you can afford to lose, then don't do it until you are more prepared. But please remember that in business, there is no reward without risk. So if you don't risk your money, then you wont be rewarded.


Do I need finance? And Where can I get it from?


Do you have enough personal savings to start the business you want to? If you don't then you will need external financing.


The place where most people will get there initial financing is the bank. But there are other places and people as well.


Bank


Mortgage for premises


Loan


Venture capitalists


Grants


And many more, but the above are the main ones.


I'm sure you know what mortgages and loans are, but chances are, you don't know what a venture capitalist is.


A venture capitalist is someone who contributes financing to a business in exchange for part ownership of the firm. This is ideal if you are starting an expensive business which you might not be able to afford, but expect high profits from.


But be careful, when you give up part ownership you give up some profits.