5 Reasons Why You Need A Work-At-Home Schedule
One of the attractions of working at home is the vision of freedom it invokes — no time clock, no time sheets, and no one to account to for how you spend your time. Yes, it is an attractive proposition, but like so many attractive propositions there is a heavy downside — you are likely wasting a lot of time.
You can spend your time every day filling out large spreadsheets to account for your day. Working for a company full time and then for yourself often encompasses work on a variety of projects that take lots of time. You can loath this activity and dismiss it as a waste of time — that is until my home business recently took off and I realized there simply wasn’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all my goals.
I now have my own spread sheet and agenda for the day and I have improved my productivity and reduced my stress immeasurably. If you don’t think you need a schedule for your home business then think again — and read on.
After a spate of relatively unproductive days when my “To Do” list seemed to grow exponentially every time I looked at it I knew something had to change.
Granted I was going through a rocky road. My home business was experiencing growing pains and taking up more than the usual time. On the home front you can spent countless hours behind your work desk behind your laptop or desktop PC. My own family was time were being sacrificed constantly, because of my pursuit for onnline success. But I’m also old enough to know there is never a perfect time in life — you just live the one you’ve got. These are simply the problems I’m dealing with this year. Next year these problems will be traded in for new fresh ones.
After studying my time and chatting with some other work-at-home folks, I discovered five reasons to embrace a schedule:
1. It’s too easy to waste time doing nonpriority tasks
2. It’s too easy to get sidetracked or distracted from your current task
3. Unscheduled work time can often overlap into your free time until you don’t have any free time at all
4. Your free time can overlap into your work time until you fall behind with important projects
5. Concentrating your time and effort on highest priority projects means more gets done
I’m not the only work at home business person encompassing the schedule. I recently took part in an online forum where men and womenhad moved to embrace it — and found it more freeing than restrictive. After all, you are still the one setting the schedule so you are free to schedule yourself off for a 3-hour lunch, an afternoon, or a whole day whenever you choose.
If you find it difficult setting up your schedule and priorities for the day and week then perhaps your significant other or a friend can help you set your schedule. Once you set up a carefully though schedule use it and stick to it so you can get more tasks done in a reasonable amount of time.
