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How to stay focused when working from home

Guest post by: Andrew Rondeau

Article Overview: 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.

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 (Yaro Starak and Jason Potash) 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.

What helps you focus on your on-line business?

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Article Tags: Blog Income, Blogging Guide, Make A Blog



Related Forum Posts
If I could change one thing - Hi Chris, Great question. If I had the opportunity to change one thing about my business I would have started out by being more focused. As an entrepreneur we are always being distracted by new ideas, opportunities, and "shiny diamonds". I would have sat down at the beginning and really figured out what my end objectives were and set up a game plan to achieve those goals. I would have then only focused on the tasks that would get me to the goals I had set out. I say that now, but unfortunately a lot of the time I am still attracted to those "shiny diamonds" so it is a constant effort to stay focused. At least I am aware of it and spend more time working on the initial strategy. Maja
Re: Is being too connected pushing your business forward or back - Hi Kevin, You have a good point. In internet marketing it can be harder to stay focused. You are surfing the net all the time, you see and find different opportunities, new methods, another way to get targeted traffic, all need to be tested and accomplished in no time. Add to this all the social networks, a person can get lost. One must stay focused, I do it by creating a list every week, and I follow this list. After i do all things on my list I can "play".
Re: Women and Home Based Business Opportunities - Honestly, in most cases today... stay at home moms or wives does not necessarily equate to unemployment or anything of that sort. You will be surprised to see how many women who are making it big working at home. Perhaps the convenience of working at home and the flexibility of the work schedule attracts many women at home to engage in online work rather than actual office based work. Furthermore you should see how many clients prefer women over men when it comes to online jobs at home. Most clients states that women are always on time for work and are commited to get the job done. There are also a lot of women entrepreneurs who are now opting to start a home based online business because of the benefit of getting to be with your family at home. I know some women who successfully balances their online business and their roles as wife and mother. It sure is fun to see them work their business like a bonding time for them. I know one that is running a RTW clothing line online... Her husband is a photographer so he takes pictures for their products while their children gladly poses for the camera as a part of their portfolio. Well I guess if you really want to work out a scenario there are a lot of ways.. but if you are not that determined to do so then you can just think of different excuses.
Re: Ladies Who Launch Profiles - Barbara, thank you for posting these profiles. They are amazing ladies and stories that help all of us stay focused, energized and inspired. Great idea! Jude
Re: Why Did You Become An Entrepreneur? - Hi members, This is a great post by Evan and I am late getting on board but I thought I would ad my few cents worth, LOL. I must say that wanting to be an Entrepreneur or work for myself has never ever meant that I wanted to have my own company, that has never been my motivation. My motivation has always been to work from home and be in control of my life, nothing else. Just to be able to organise my life around working from home would be a dream come true for me and is something I am striving for. I have always been a fairly organised sort of person so the old trap of giving myself too much time off would probably work just the opposite for me. I would be so frightened of failure I would probably work too much. There is an old saying which goes something like ’If you love what you do then you never do a days work in your life’. It is something like that anyway and for many of us, working from home would seem like that, it certainly would for me, regards, Mal.


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