How to Stay Motivated and Happy When You Work From Home

Posted on June 13, 2013 by jeannebarnard

For millions of working people, work from home is a daily reality. For others, it can be a temporary necessity caused by unforeseen events, such as natural disasters, transportation problems or other issues. Many people love the freedom and autonomy of working from home, while others find it stressful to be cut off from their offices and their peers. For those people, the lack of structure and support can cause anxiety and a feeling of being out of touch and unmotivated. Whether it’s a temporary period of telecommuting or a full-time gig, there are ways to make working from home a stress-free and productive experience.

One of the biggest complaints people have about working from home is lack of motivation. Once you realize no-one’s micromanaging your time, it becomes all too easy to slack off. Household chores beckon, the phone rings or a child is home sick. It’s hard to stay on task with no supervision and tons of distractions. Here are a few tips
that can help.

Start Your Workday with a Routine

Because there’s no commute or trip to the office break room, people who work from home have a much less dramatic transition from home life to work life. To get into a working mindset, it helps to have a routine that will help create a transition into the workday. It can be as small as getting a cup of tea and sitting in a certain chair. Whatever it is, it should be done the same way to start each workday.

Get Dressed for Work

Though one of the great benefits of working from home is that clothing is “optional,” getting dressed will help create a working mindset. The subconscious mind equates being dressed with being productive. It doesn’t matter what you wear, but it’s probably a good idea to ditch the sweats and pajamas and put on something you wouldn’t mind being seen in.

Create a Schedule

Keeping track of your time is a great way to stay motivated. Start by posting a schedule on the wall near your workspace listing work hours and non-work hours.  Setting aside a certain time period for work, with built-in breaks, can help keep motivation high and distractions to a minimum. Set a time limit for necessary diversions such as household chores, and set daily and weekly goals for task completion.

Give Yourself a Break

It’s important to take a lunch break and to feed yourself and reward yourself regularly. Build the breaks into your schedule so that you don’t find yourself burned out from low blood sugar and lack of energy. Taking breaks can also help beat the second biggest issue people have with working from home: loneliness.

Get Out of the House

The quiet of working from home can be great for some people’s productivity, while for others it’s a lonely and stressful experience. The workplace is most people’s primary source of social interaction. Beating isolation is an important part of dealing with work from home stress. Try going out for lunch or bringing a laptop to a coffee shop or other public place. Even if you don’t interact with anyone, being around other people for a little while can have a positive effect.

Network

If your at-home work doesn’t lend itself to Starbucks time, joining networking groups and work-related clubs can be a real lifesaver. Networking groups are ideal for reducing social isolation, providing structure to a monthly or weekly schedule and creating business opportunities. If you don’t have day-to-day interactions with co-workers, finding a group of people in the same industry who speak your language and share your concerns can help reduce anxiety and keep things in perspective.

Motivation and isolation can be the two biggest issues in the otherwise low-stress and high-freedom of working from home. These tips should help alleviate the effects of both and lead to productive, happy work from home.

About the Author

Jeanne Barnard is the owner of work at home sites allstayathome.com and allstayathome.biz.  She left corporate America to start a home business in 1999 and has never looked back.  She has an MBA and loves helping people work from home.

Posted in Home Business, Home Jobs, Success Tips, Work At Home | Leave a comment

Home Jobs – A Brief Overview

Posted on June 7, 2013 by jeannebarnard

In these contemporary times, many people have become interested in working at home. This interest stems from a wide variety of reasons, including the need to make supplementary income and a desire to spend additional time with one’s family. Another reason that individuals choose home jobs is because they want to escape office politics or the traffic that daily commuting entails. If you are interested in home jobs, you should learn as much as possible about the ones that are currently available.

As individuals who have pursued careers from home know, there are many legitimate home jobs. One of them includes child care. Although child care is broadly defined, it generally incorporates watching and caring for children in a manner that ensures their safety. Child care workers also tend to provide children with educational and recreational tools that enable them to grow intellectually and have fun until they are returned to their primary caregiver.  To provide child care that is recognized as a legal endeavor through the state, it is important that all individuals seeking this type of from-home business check with their local government to determine what type of licensing and/or certification is necessary.

While child care is a great work at home position for individuals who love children, there are other home jobs that an individual could pursue. One example is writing and editing. The type of work that can be done through this venue is diverse, and could include anything from writing political articles to editing science fiction novels. While holding a degree in a field such as Journalism or English may make your ability to perform this type of work more economically profitable, you do not have to have formal education to do the job. Indeed, there are a variety of certifications that you could attain to demonstrate your professionalism and proficiency in the field of writing and editing. In addition to this, simply establishing a reputation as a competent and capable writer and/or editor may give you credibility within the field.

Another type of work at home job that an individual might want to pursue is bookkeeping. In essence, bookkeeping is a field in which an individual keeps a company’s business records accurate and up-to-date. While it can incorporate a wide range of tasks and responsibilities, one of the main bookkeeping processes will include making a record of incoming revenue as well as money that is paid out. This task will incorporate keeping records of monies a company may owe to employees, vendors, contractors, tax agencies, or any other entity. Excellent bookkeeping benefits employers in many ways and helps ensure that they can effectively manage their cash flow, develop future plans based on current financial trends, and stay knowledgeable about profits and losses. Moreover, federal and local tax agencies have made the keeping of accurate books a requirement. Because bookkeeping can be done from the privacy and comfort of one’s home, it may be an ideal position for those who do not want to be in the traditional work environment.

While the work at home jobs listed above provide you with a brief overview of the type of positions available for people who don’t want to work in the office setting, there are many more home jobs that an individual could select. They include but are not limited to transcription, tutoring, telemarketing, translation services, etc.  For an extensive list of options, visit the Work at Home Directory  at www.allstayathome.com.   When you select a from-home work position, it is important that you choose a job that is comparable to your current skill set, home life, and the legal requirements for the region where you live.

About the Author
Jeanne Barnard is the owner of work at home sites allstayathome.com and allstayathome.biz.  She left corporate America to start a home business in 1999 and has never looked back.  She has an MBA and loves helping people work from home.

Posted in Home Jobs, Work At Home | Leave a comment

How to Overcome Work at Home Obstacles

Posted on June 4, 2013 by jeannebarnard

Imagine never having to battle the morning commute or never having to worry about getting home in time for dinner because, well, you’re already there. Working at home can have many benefits and rewards, like saving time and money on gas and commuting expense. But, there are also a few obstacles to overcome when working at home.  Many people don’t realize how much of their social encounters and fulfillment come from being around other people at work and unless you’re spouse or roommates also work at home, your day at work might get pretty lonely. Also, working at home is fraught with subtle distractions that many people don’t expect to find outside of the traditional workplace. But despite these unique obstacles, there are several ways to combat the forces that threaten to halt a burgeoning work at home career.

Loneliness
A lonely heart is a sad thing indeed and working at home can make you acutely aware of the silence surrounding you.  Will some might consider this a dream come true, (having eight hours of uninterrupted silence), others might find the silence deafening.  But, there are a few things that you can do to make it seem like you’re not alone.  Simply playing music or having the television on can provide some necessary ambient noise that can alleviate some of the solitariness of working at home.  It’s also cheaper than getting a dog. Just make sure that the added ambiance doesn’t turn into a distraction. If your job entails using a computer, consider taking a laptop to a coffee shop or bookstore that offers free WiFi or get a portable WiFi device for your laptop.  Just being around people can prevent you from feeling lonely.

Distractions
While it may seem that working at home would be the most distraction free environment available, distraction still lurks here.  Home is where people can become their own worst enemy.  From not getting up in time to having strange urges to clean out the attic, self-defeating behaviors can be your worst enemies and strongest distractions when working at home.  This is especially true if you have a challenging assignment that needs input from other sources.  We often like to procrastinate when we find something challenging.  Without the imposed deadlines from a supervisor or the competition from colleagues it is imperative that you have self-imposed deadlines to beat distractions. Deadlines give focus, attach a time related urgency and are often necessary facts of life. And while some people feel that deadlines are restricting and limit creativity, deadlines can help your work from home career from dying a premature death.

No Sounding Board
Besides the loneliness, and distractions that can thwart a thriving work at home job, there is something else that can be equally detrimental to someone who has a work at home job.  Having someone or a team of people to bounce ideas off of when you’re struggling with a work problem or issue is more difficult when working at home. Spending too much time in your own head can cause you to go around in circles, waste time and produce results that are one dimensional.  One way to combat this is to pick up the phone, use instant messaging or email to connect with other people in your field.  Just because you are working at home doesn’t mean that you are alone. Others in your field might also be working solo and appreciate the human contact.

Working at home can be both lucrative and rewarding, but just like any job it is not without its own unique pitfalls and obstacles.  It’s important to identify those that you have issues with and create a plan of action that will help you to avoid or overcome the obstacles that you will face in your work at home  career.  Treat it like any other job, get up on time, “arrive” early, and focus on the job at hand and you will be successful.

About the Author

Jeanne Barnard is the owner of work at home sites  allstayathome.com and allstayathome.biz.  She left corporate America to start a home business in 1999 and has never looked back.  She has an MBA and loves helping people work from home.

 

 

 

Posted in Home Business, Success Tips, Work At Home | Leave a comment