Finding Time to Work At Home

One of the biggest excuses for not working at home is not having enough time. I’ve been known to complain about not having enough time myself. But the reality is there is enough time. The trick is in managing time. While everyone is busy with jobs, kids, commitments, bills, housework and reality TV, there is always a way to find time, even little pockets of time that can be used to make money at home. And in fact, the busier you are, the easier it might be. I know that sounds strange, but I once read an article that said “busy people get more done”. While that sounds obvious, the point of the article was that people who had free time on their hands didn’t use it efficiently, where as busy people were better managers of their time.

So how do you make the time to achieve your work-at-home goals?

1) Stop feeling guilty. Moms in particular have a hard time pursuing personal goals because it takes away from kids and family. What’s most interesting about this is that most women who want to work at home do so to help the family not for some self-indulgent reason. Guilt about spending time on a work-at-home goal isn’t limited to moms or women. Dads and men can be afflicted as well. Guilt doesn’t serve any purpose but to make you feel bad, so follow the tips in #2 and let it go.

2) Get support. If working at home is important to you, let members of your family know about it. Most people I know would be willing to sacrifice some time with their partner if in the long run they reached their goals particularly if those goals helped the family as a whole. You can even get the family involved in helping you, so you’re not spending time away from them.

3) Get real about your time. There are twenty-four hours in a day. If you use up twenty-two hours for sleeping, commuting, working, chores and time with family, you should still have two hours left to work on your goal. Most people argue with me that their life-tasks take more than twenty-two hours. I then ask them, how much TV do they watch? The average American (who works, does chores and has kids) watches several hours a day. If everyone who had a work-at-home goal gave up TV, I bet we’d have more millionaires. Again, it’s not about how much time you have, it’s about how well you use the time you have. You’ll never have more time, so it’s time to get real about how you spend your time. Find the pockets of time that are wasted that could be put to better (more profitable) use.

4) Make time instead of looking for free time. When I have free time, I don’t usually think of the projects I want to get done. Instead I usually waste it flitting around. Instead of waiting for free time, schedule time to work on your work-at-home goal as you would schedule other activities such as work, bills, exercise, and social events. You don’t necessarily have to have large pockets of time. Thirty minutes before work, 45-minutes at lunch and hour at night can give you enough time to plan and start implementing your work-at-home project. Further, by having a regular schedule of working on your goal, it will become habit and be easier to stick to.

5) Protect your work-at-home schedule. Don’t let guilt or other activities get in the way of the time you’ve scheduled to work on your goal. You’ve made a commitment and you’ve got to stick to it. If something comes up and you need to give up the time, reschedule your work-at-home activities, so that it’s sure to get done.

I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic about how busy people are. But in reality, everyone is busy. Successful home business owners didn’t have 8 hours a day to build their business initially. Many have children and other commitments as well. They had all the same obstacles (time, money, economy, etc) that everyone else has. But what they could control is their use of time. You can do the same.

Organize Your Home Office Day

Today is Organize Your Home Office Day. I’m probably the last person to provide information on home office organization since I’m organizationally challenged. But having worked at home for many years, I can tell you that organization is a factor in achieving work-at-home success.

While you’ll find a ton of organizational books, tools, totes and more, I believe that organization is a personal thing. I have tried so many different systems and most never worked for me. My mind just doesn’t work the way the systems require one to think and act. In the end I’ve adapted existing or developed my own systems. Here are some tips and tools I like.

iGoogle Start Page

iGoogle – When I turn on my computer and go online, the first page I see is my iGoogle page. It has my whole day at a glance including my calender, to-do’s, Facebook, Gmail, weather, feed reader and more. It my whole life on one page!

Gmail - If you end up having more than one email account, Gmail is a great way to organize and manage them. I send ALL my email except my business mail to a single Gmail account. From there I can respond, label, delete or do whatever needs to be done. I can change my email from profile depending on who I’m writing. The labels make sorting and organizing emails easier than files.

Google Calendar – I used to use Agendus for my desktop and phone. But now that I have a Smart phone, I don’t want to have sync when I can just go online. I can SMS text an appointment to my calendar as well as view it from any computer. It works with iGoogle so I can have it on my start page when I view my day-at-a-glance.

Binder – While I use a lot of online apps, I’m not completely paperless. I haven’t yet found the perfect daily/weekly organizer online (or offline for that matter). So I created my own. I have a fancy full size planner binder in which I keep my schedule as well as sections for my projects. For example I’ll have a section for each blog or my writing work. The actual planner is one page with my weekly view and an opposite page where I keep my weekly writing tasks. The challenge for me was that so many planners were business or personal, but didn’t integrate both. Since I move from one to the other during the day, I needed everyone on one page. So I have my everyday tasks listed at the top along side with my project goals for the week and my home cleaning zone (I try to be like Flylady although I’m not so good at it). Below that I have a section for each day of the week Monday through Friday and the tasks that need to be done that day. For example Monday is grocery day and post all job on the blog for the week. There are blank lines for me to fill in other activities or appointments as well. I use a highlighter to highlight appointments and tasks that have to be done.

Organization is really about being able to access your information and materials when you need them and knowing what you need to be doing and at what time you need to do it. However you’re able to set up your home office to achieve that goal is going to be the best organizational system for you.

You might want to check out my blog Better Living on the Web where I post all sorts of great web-based organizational and make-life-easier tools.

WAHS Podcast #81 Organizing for Work At Home Success with Elizabeth Hagen

This week I cover telecommuting myths and misconceptions, and what’s true about work-at-home jobs.

If you’d like to download any episode you’ll notice a new “Download MP3″ below the player. You can get the podcasts through iTunes as well.
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Resources Mentioned On the Show

Elizabeth Hagen