How to Stay Focused When Working From Home
Twenty-nine years ago, I started my full-time career.
I was studying for a Computer Science degree and I got bored! I dropped out.
I decided to leave.
I wanted to earn some money.
I gave up the degree course.
I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I just knew I didn't want to go to college anymore.
I visited the job centre for a few days.
There was a job in the banking area of London.
Right in the city of London.
The job was for a Pensions Clerk.
£3,600 annual salary plus free lunches.
That's equivalent to £8,500 in today's world if we use 3% inflation - that's is less than the minimum wage! But I was happy and I got free lunches.
I was offered the job.
I took it.
I also had a couple of little part-time jobs at weekends and evening collecting football pools money and valeting cars.
I certainly wasn't afraid of working hard.
I enjoyed the extra money.
Within a few months I joined the IT department of the same London company and my salary almost doubled overnight.
I moved around a few companies and ended up having a great career in IT.
Then about three years ago I started my own on-line business while working full time.
I worked long hours for the company I was working for and evenings and weekends on my own on-line business.
There was a lot of downsizing and redundancies and I wanted something to 'keep me going' if I were ever made redundant.
I survived the cutbacks numerous times.
I continued to work hard at my full-time role and my on-line business.
So for 29 years, I worked for a company...
for someone else.
Then four months ago, I had the option to take voluntary redundancy.
I took it and suddenly I'm working for myself.
No boss.
No objectives.
No staff to manage.
NO MONTHLY SALARY! That's pretty scary.
I'm now on my own.
I make all the decisions.
I decide when to work and what to work on.
Nowadays, I have 4 major activities that I perform most working days: 1.
Content creation - blog posts, videos, new products, tweaking my own blogs 2.
Marketing - article directory, blog carnival, RSS, directory submissions, blog and forum commenting, affiliate marketing, social bookmarking, Tweeting 3.
Clients - working and mentoring with my clients on their sites 4.
Learning - reading other blog posts, completing the next phase of a course I am doing Most days, it takes me 15 seconds to get to work.
I just walk from the bedroom to the home office.
Turn on the pc and while it is booting up, I just check what I have planned to do today on my activity list.
Then I check my emails and respond to any that need responding to.
Check my direct tweets and reply to any that need replying to.
Check my blog traffic stats to see if I am on target with increasing by 10% month on month.
I am a member of a couple of membership forums and I go in and see what people are discussing and if I can add any value to the discussions taking place.
That takes, on average, an hour.
Then it's coffee time.
Then I look at my plan to see what I have planned for the day.
I have a weekly plan and the weekly plan is broken down into daily tasks based upon the 4 activities I mention above.
And each daily task is broken down into 60-minute chunks.
And at the end of each week, I plan out the next week's daily plan and activities.
By having a daily plan and planning ahead, it helps me focus.
I was studying for a Computer Science degree and I got bored! I dropped out.
I decided to leave.
I wanted to earn some money.
I gave up the degree course.
I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I just knew I didn't want to go to college anymore.
I visited the job centre for a few days.
There was a job in the banking area of London.
Right in the city of London.
The job was for a Pensions Clerk.
£3,600 annual salary plus free lunches.
That's equivalent to £8,500 in today's world if we use 3% inflation - that's is less than the minimum wage! But I was happy and I got free lunches.
I was offered the job.
I took it.
I also had a couple of little part-time jobs at weekends and evening collecting football pools money and valeting cars.
I certainly wasn't afraid of working hard.
I enjoyed the extra money.
Within a few months I joined the IT department of the same London company and my salary almost doubled overnight.
I moved around a few companies and ended up having a great career in IT.
Then about three years ago I started my own on-line business while working full time.
I worked long hours for the company I was working for and evenings and weekends on my own on-line business.
There was a lot of downsizing and redundancies and I wanted something to 'keep me going' if I were ever made redundant.
I survived the cutbacks numerous times.
I continued to work hard at my full-time role and my on-line business.
So for 29 years, I worked for a company...
for someone else.
Then four months ago, I had the option to take voluntary redundancy.
I took it and suddenly I'm working for myself.
No boss.
No objectives.
No staff to manage.
NO MONTHLY SALARY! That's pretty scary.
I'm now on my own.
I make all the decisions.
I decide when to work and what to work on.
Nowadays, I have 4 major activities that I perform most working days: 1.
Content creation - blog posts, videos, new products, tweaking my own blogs 2.
Marketing - article directory, blog carnival, RSS, directory submissions, blog and forum commenting, affiliate marketing, social bookmarking, Tweeting 3.
Clients - working and mentoring with my clients on their sites 4.
Learning - reading other blog posts, completing the next phase of a course I am doing Most days, it takes me 15 seconds to get to work.
I just walk from the bedroom to the home office.
Turn on the pc and while it is booting up, I just check what I have planned to do today on my activity list.
Then I check my emails and respond to any that need responding to.
Check my direct tweets and reply to any that need replying to.
Check my blog traffic stats to see if I am on target with increasing by 10% month on month.
I am a member of a couple of membership forums and I go in and see what people are discussing and if I can add any value to the discussions taking place.
That takes, on average, an hour.
Then it's coffee time.
Then I look at my plan to see what I have planned for the day.
I have a weekly plan and the weekly plan is broken down into daily tasks based upon the 4 activities I mention above.
And each daily task is broken down into 60-minute chunks.
And at the end of each week, I plan out the next week's daily plan and activities.
By having a daily plan and planning ahead, it helps me focus.
