It is eerily quiet. I am at my desk and the only sound is the clicking of my fingers going across my keyboard.
My children returned to school yesterday. It is now my second day working full-time from home during the school year. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have been looking forward to this day, imagining the sounds of nothingness and not having constant interruptions.
Yet the quiet has made me feel a bit sad…not an emotion I expected to feel. The past two weeks especially have been difficult. I was trying to juggle my work, get in some last minute appointments, take the kids shopping for school clothes, endure their friends hanging out at our house and drive my children wherever they needed to go.
Not sure why I feel sad. I guess it’s more about my children growing up than anything. All I know is that working from home is a definite blessing.
As I sit here in the quiet, I am thinking about the fact that if I should receive a phone call from the school or one of my children, I could drop whatever I was doing and be there for them.
Yet I also know that I could drop whatever I am doing and allow other things to pull me away from my work. This is something a friend of mine asked about last week. She made the comment that she could never work from home because she wouldn’t be disciplined. She asked me how I am able to ignore all the distractions around me, like the TV, Facebook and housework.
It is hard to be disciplined. No one is here. No one would know if I turned on the television or took a trip to Target. No one would know if I went outside on my deck and read. But I have responsibilities with my work and they must be done.
Being disciplined, especially when no one is around to watch, isn’t easy. The pull to do other things are there. Yet if I want to make my career succeed I have to overcome them.
How do you overcome the temptation of being pulled away from your work? How do you discipline yourself when you work from home?
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