Finding Balance While Working From Home

Facebook is the devil. I'm not gonna lie. It is the hulking heavyweight in a long list of distractions that permeate my day. And, to be honest, I sometimes invite these distractions in a self-sabotaging, fear-based montage of "imposter syndrome". You know what I'm talking about.... all those icky self-doubt shadows that ride the shoulder of every creative individual ever, throughout the entire history of creative individuals.

But it's not just Facebook that throws my work and productivity off balance. It's suddenly needing to clean my oven at 4pm on a Thursday, when it was just cleaned on Tuesday. It's re-organizing my bead trays for the umpteenth time this month. It's paying bills and grocery shopping and visiting the in-laws and birthday parties and graduations. And it's also every other hobby I can conceive of, with which to procrastinate.

Finding balance when working from home is, to say the least, challenging. So here are some tips I've learned during my five years in business for myself:

• Minimize distractions. Don't give yourself an excuse to procrastinate!
  
  • Turn off the computer! Yes, we all want to check our email and, as business owners, it's important to address customer inquiries. But schedule a time to do so (see the next tip). Check your phone, email and social media accounts once before work begins and once when it ends, but otherwise turn the endless distractions of the World Wide Web off while working.
    
  • Work space is for work! Don't eat at your desk. Don't play World of Warcraft at your desk. And, conversely, don't work while in bed! Keep work separate from "play", and you're bound to see productivity improve.
    
  • A clean home is a happy home. Once a week, schedule just three hours to clean your home or, at the very least, the area immediately surrounding your work space. Don't allow a pile of laundry on the kitchen table to distract you from creating!
    
  • Clear the work space when you've "clocked out". At the end of my work day, clearing my desk of tools, wire and completed or in-progress projects allows me to focus on personal time and interactions with family and friends, without a mess of wire on the desk catching my eye while discussing my niece's graduation party with my spouse. What was that you were saying about needing a "Congrats" card? Because all I heard was "blah blah blah... wire on the table... blah blah blah." This habit also establishes a clean palette for a new work day and allows me to approach projects from a fresh or unbiased perspective.
    
• Schedule, schedule, schedule. And stick to it! I'd be lost without my trusty Filofax planner, though I don't exactly "plan" in the conventional sense. I don't itemize my tasks by hour, nor keep a calendar of important dates. But I do list my daily goals if for no other reason than the satisfaction of ticking them off. I've found a scheduling and planning system that works for me, so I encourage you to experiment. Try the hourly daily planner spreads, or the list keeping, or the master monthly calendar. Give the bullet journal a try, which is also useful for personal creative expression! Find what works for your lifestyle and your own personal expectations and goals. But stick to it! Examples of things to schedule:
  
  • Days off. Even if you love your job, schedule time away from it.
    
  • Meal breaks and exercise (important for sedentary business owners).
    
  • Bill paying, grocery shopping and household chores.
    
  • Daily or monthly work goals and the actions steps required for completion.
    
  • Custom orders: dates placed, completion promise dates, shipping days.
    
  • Business reporting: budgeting, inventory, taxes or mileage, for instance.
    
• Routine! Creating routine is the cornerstone of a productive work day.
  
  • Reset your internal clock! Wake up and go to bed the same time each day.
    
  • Get dressed! Don't work in your pajamas, as delightful as that might sound. Getting dressed says "I mean business" and increases productivity.
    
  • Breaks! Break for meals and exercise regularly, but do so routinely... the same time (or as close to the same time as possible) each day, to re-establish the mental mindset for work.
    
• Do not OVER schedule! This one is so important. And it was one of the traps I set for myself when I began to experiment with scheduling my day. I'd fill each hour of those daily planner pages with a chore or task, for business or home, and when I'd under-estimated the time needed to complete these tasks, I found myself disappointed in my lack of "completion" at the end of each day. It was, to say the least, a motivation-killer. So keep your daily and monthly goals realistic!
  

If you have tips or tricks for balancing your business and home life, I'd love to hear them in the comments below!