Maintaining Your Motivation When You Are Working from Home. . .There's a reason why motivation is one of the biggest challenges for people running a business at home. Maintaining motivation while working from home is very hard. Why? Because when you are at home, there are a million distractions calling your name. Some of those districations are wonderful. They are called children, wife, husband, phone calls from friends, etc. Others are terrible. They are called dirty dishes, bills to be paid, lawn to be mowed, etc. Also, working from home can be a very solitary thing (even if you have a house full of family). If you work at a job or in an office setting outside of the home, there are other people around who are working, too. Watching them, interacting with them and, at times, meeting their demands forces you to stay on task....well, at least most of the time. At home, the only one monitoring you is....YOU. And what if you are a lousy boss of you? Try these strategies: 1. Treat your job like a real job. That's right. Set the alarm in the morning at get up so you can start work at a pre-determined time. Get dressed (including shoes). If you are normally wear makeup, put on your makeup. Comb your hair. Be by your phone and ready to start work at the time your customers expect you to be working. 2. Make a To-Do list for the day and hold yourself accountable for it. Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, believed in making a list each day of the 6 most important things you need to accomplish in that day. She proposed that if you did that every day and focused on making sure you accoplished the things on that list, you could accomplish anything. Look at the huge empire she built, and it all started as a very small business staffed by her and her son. 3. Join a networking association or a service club. You need to market your business anyway, right? So why not do two things at once (or even three)? Joining a networking group allows you to market your business while also alleviating the isolation that can come with working at home. It can also help you get motvated to get up, dressed, and out of the house if you didn't so well with my first suggestion. Finally, service clubs allow you to network while also doing something good for your community. Win-win is good, remember?
4. Develop goals and review your goals at least weekly. Make sure you have set goals and clearly established where you want to go and how you plan to get there. If you take a look at your goals at least each week, you will keep yourself reminded of where you are going. Some people post their goals around teir home office, either as a list or on sticky notes containing key words to remind them of their goals. 5. Schedule 30 minutes each day for motivational reading. I highly recommend that you spend at least 15 minutes at the start of your day and at least 15 minutes at the end of your day (or just before you go to bed) reading motivational books or aticles. It's an incredibly powerful way to keep you in a positive frame of mind and on the right track.
Check out some of my favorite motivational books.
|
