One of the struggles that I find a lot of people have who work from home is managing their time. When you aren’t under the careful observation of a boss it can be too easy to get stuck in the vicious cycle of time wasters. You know what I mean…checking your email every few minutes, picking up around the house, watching Dr. Phil.
Recently I started really paying attention to the things I spend time doing in between my work. I knew I wasn’t managing my time well because there were just too many evenings that I still had to finish things up. What I discovered is that my number one time waster was checking my email.
First I get a loud beep on my phone that lets me know I have received a message. I never know if it is a text or an email so I always check. After all, I want to be able to respond to any texts that I receive from my husband or children. But then even when I see that it’s just an email I would think, well I better make sure it’s not my editor.
So I would check and see what the email was, clearly that it wasn’t from my editor yet I would open it anyway. There are some days where I get emails literally every two minutes. Those minutes of checking email were really beginning to add up.
I was also finding myself doing things around the house that I had to remind myself I wouldn’t be able to do if I worked outside the home. So once you can identify those things that really waste your time you can find a way to better manage your time.
For me I realized that I do need to check my emails during the day but not every few minutes. So I began to schedule two times where I would do that, right after I ate breakfast and right after eating lunch. Then I wouldn’t check email again until after I was through with all of my work. Now this is my plan and it’s only happened a few times but I will continue to work at it. Healthy habits take practice before they become second nature.
I also decided to schedule my housework during a specific time of the day. This way I won’t wander around the house to just “quick” do this or that. Again, this is something I am still working on.
Managing your time means knowing what the time wasters in your day are and then devising a plan to get around them. Schedules and routines are the best ways to manage your time. What can you do to better manage your time?
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