Work at home? Time is of the essence!
I’ve heard people say that the main reason that they want to work at home is because
they can work only when they want to work.
It IS true that you can set your own work
hours when you work at home but it does NOT mean that you don’t have to have set
work hours.
A ‘hit or miss’ work schedule…or rather, the lack of any work schedule at all, simply will
not work. Time is of the Essence! YOUR time!
Working at home can be a very, very good thing.
You can be at home to see the kids off
to school and be at home when they get home. You can put a load of laundry in and it
can run through the cycles while you are working.
You can have dinner cooked before a hungry family descends like a flock of hungry
buzzards. All of those things are real perks that you automatically get when you work at
home.
Working at home can also be a very, very bad thing if you do not plan your time well and
if you do not set up a work schedule that you and your family can live with. When you
work at home, time really is of the essence.
You must make very good use of the time that you spend working.
If you are not efficient
in accomplishing the tasks that must be done, you will either spend too much time
working or you will fail miserably at your work at home job or business.
You must set up a work schedule for yourself when you work at home and then you
must enforce that work schedule for yourself and insist that you family and friends also
adhere to your work schedule.
A job out in the brick and mortar world does two things; (1) It provides a structure for
your day and (2) it tells your family and friends that your time is spoken for during
your working hours. You will notice that both of these things that a regular job provides
both relate to your TIME.
First let’s discuss the structure that a regular job provides and how you can apply that
structure to your work at home job or business. When you have a job that you go to
outside your home, you are required to be at that job at a specified time on specified
days of the week.
When you have a work at home job or business, you need that same kind of structure.
You need to set regular working hours.
The freedom that a work at home job provides is
that you can choose the hours…but you do have to choose!
Now let’s talk about your family and friends and how they are going to view your work at
home job. It is a strange but very true fact that your dear mother would not DREAM of
calling you at your ‘real’ job and asking you to drive Aunt Rosie to the beauty shop and
wait for her….after all….you are WORKING and can’t be expected to leave your job to
run errands. Right?
That very same considerate mother WILL call you and ask you to take Aunt Rosie to the
beauty shop and wait for her when you are working at home. Why? Because you are at
home and available, that’s why.
Your dear, sweet mother will not see your work at home job as a ‘real’ job. Your spouse
will also see you as being free to run errands. Your friends will see you as being
available for long telephone conversations, lunch or for a coffee klatch.
You can see the problem. If YOU do not schedule your time and abide by your schedule
yourself, others will not. Unless you see your work at home job as a REAL job with
REAL working hours, your time will be eaten up. You will not accomplish the tasks that
you need to accomplish.
