10 rules for working at home.

I found this article on MSN this morning and thought it was very good. It has several references to other articles as well. Did you know that if you take more than a 3 min break you could be procrastinating?? If you are going to work at home you have to have your office job separate from the rest of the house routine. No television, no answering the front door, call forwarding, no IM'ing while working at least if you are trying to write articles.

Just thought I would post it here for everyones benefit in case they didn't get to see it on MSN. It has alot of good ideas.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/RetirementandWills/EscapeTheRatRace/weston-10-rules-for-w orking-at-home.aspx

.... and no facebook! Sheesh, I can waste a whole hour on facebook if I am not careful.

Good article.

I also found out that taking 10 minutes break every hour is good for me and my mind.

Thanks for sharing the article weebitty.

I work 45 minutes and take a 15 minute break. Anything less and I feel the need to work, which means that I do not want to work and I don't do things out of neediness.

Ryan

Haha, its so true. It's much easier to waste time working from home than it is when you're in an office. Maybe because nobody's watching.

My team and I just sat down a little while ago and created a weekly schedule to accomplish everything we need too. Now every hour in the day is planned, including lunch!

The awesome thing is that we all found that by sticking to our schedule we are actually working less hours now that our hours aren't open to wasting...they're accounted for.

Great Article, I can get to focus and feel married to the computer or get too distracted going from one extreme to the next.

Taking a break regularly helps.

There ar some tips
1: Freedom With Responsibility
2: Learn To Say "No
3.Restrict Your Social Communication Medium
4..Follow A Policy At Home

I agree with needing to take regular breaks, especially if you are writing articles. If you can just walk away for a few minutes and then come back, you will gain more fresh ideas to use.

Learn how to outsource things that don't have to be done by you that will free you up to do more income producing activities! Make a list of things you do daily so that way you can compile a campaign schedule to pass on to your assistant, web designer, article writer or any other person you outsource tasks to that will give complete detail to everything you need completed and leave no room for error. And it gives you a whole lot of balance so you don't get burned out!

I have a second screen on my computer but I do find that I still get distracted easy if I have play/chat open on one screen and work on the other.

One thing that led me to work from home was the flexibility to be able to work around my other routines, though some days I wonder if I will ever make it with work from home, as I have been at it 7 months and still not a single earning made.

All I can do is set my self goals each day to achieve and then work on them amongst everything else I do. Trying to do a set number of minutes or hrs at a time is too hard.

well you can't say you arn't committed to it. Good for you though for sticking with it. Alot of people give up after a month or so and then say that the company was no good or who ever. So good luck with it hope you make something very soon. Maybe the article will help you?

I work in increments. I do about an hour in the morning hours when the kiddos are at school and then an hour in the evening after bedtime.

I struggled with time management for a long time with having 4 kids and so breaking it apart and doing it when they are at school or asleep has really helped me. I no longer feel guilty about spending too much time on the computer.

thanks - some good advice , i always seems to find something to do around the house that is not work related but "needs to be done " , i work from home one day a week at the moment but wish to make it more soon . Having children around as well does nat make it easy ..

Sebastian

Having kids is a real challenge to gettng things done at home. It also depends on how old they are if you can have them do something else while you get some work done. Do they go to school?? or are they too young??

Thank you for this information. I need this kind of advise too. It is not bad to relax for a few minutes or do other things that can help you unwind.

One of the best thing you can do for your business is treat it like a business. If you want to start making the real money then you have to put in the real work. You can work a hr day, long as you doing money making activity then you will make money.

"Having children around as well does nat make it easy .. "

The understatement of the decade! At least mine have all learned the concept of "Mommy is at work - She'll be there shortly!"

The downside is that the youngest now throws a tantrum if I step anywhere near the computer outside work hours

For those that don't have the luxury of spending as much time as they like at work one of my rules has become 'don't stress it'. If I only achieve one thing a day towards my business then that is good. It might take me more time to get there, but everyone is enjoying the journey a whole lot more!

Rach you have the right outlook. You will get there too with such a positive attitude. Yes you may only get one thing done but at least you got that one thing and not just given up all together. Maybe on other days you can get 3 things done to kind of make up for it. But DO SOMETHING EVERYDAY I can just picture you little one throwing a temper tantrum when you get near your computer. maybe wait until after bedtime to go back to it again.

Ha I wish!..... We have 4 children under 6 and hubby is at work from 7am to 5.30pm. When babes are in bed - it's big kid time!

But you are right, sometimes I get a good run and achieve way more than I planned. And of course one day all the kids will be at school, but for now life balance is the key.