It's time you took your small at-home business seriously. It's time to act like you are at the office, It's tempting to think that now that you are your own boss and work from your home you can 'go to the office' in your pajamas or wake up late and eat lunch in bed and in general ‘finally do what you want when you want’.
Wrong! To be effective, efficient and successful in your business – you need to treat it with the same respect your treat someone else’s business. It's time to act like you are "at the office" in your own home:
Here are my 6 commandments to working at home:
1. Get dressed to work. DO NOT WORK IN YOUR PAJAMAS (it’s one of the 10 commandments, trust me)!
2. Give yourself time to move into work mode. Use your 'get up-breakfast' routine to move from home mode to work mode. Imagine this 20-30 minute period as your travel time to your office.
3. Examine how much time you REALLY work. It’s time to understand that working alone can be more effective and time-efficient than working in an office. An hour of non-interrupted at-home work could equal as much as 8-hours of at-office work with its frequent coffee, schmoozing, lunch breaks.
4. Give yourself breaks. This goes to what I spoke about in no. 3. For every task completed, I take a break, clear my head and go on to the next task.
5. Schedule tasks. This is one of my newest favorite tips. For nearly 20 years I used to write TO DO lists in a spiral notebook and then happily cross off completed tasks or added them to tomorrow’s TO DO list. Now I schedule my tasks in my Google Calendar. My TO DOs are now tasks. I love this new system.
6. Get paid for your time. Like any business, you should be able to assess if your day’s work was effective, efficient and profitable.
At the beginning of each day you should know what your goals are for the day.
At the end of the day you should know what you accomplished, how much money you earned, how many hours you worked and what you plan for the coming day.
One of the best tools I use to help me with my billable hours is http://myhours.com/ This is a great free online tracking system that allows you to create time tracking by customer, project and task. Sign up, use it and make time your profitable friend.
Want to know more about building and branding your small business?
Contact me today. Make today the day you and your business work together.
