Organising Your Day When You Work From Home
Copyright © Lorraine Simpson
http://www.FifthAceOnline.com

Increasingly the ideal for many people is to work from home and the Internet has made this a real possibility for thousands of us. There’s a lot to be said for avoiding the daily commute and the stresses of the workplace but working from home brings its own problems and to be successful in your home based business managing your day effectively and efficiently is essential. Use the pointers below to make sure you are making the most of your time.

Identify And Organise Your Work Area
One of the major problems that can arise is that the distinction between work and home life becomes blurred. Create a separate work area (ideally a separate room if you have space) that is used solely for that purpose. If necessary the corner of a room is fine but avoid the general living area of your home - it’s difficult to focus on the task in hand when someone else is lounging around watching TV! Make sure that the tools you need (files, reference books, paper, pens, etc) are close to hand but stored in an organised manner. Set aside 5 minutes each day to tidy your work area. A cluttered desk or work area is depressing and the chances are you will waste a lot of time looking for papers, etc. There are those who maintain that they like a messy desk and they know where everything is – when put to the test this rarely turns out to be the case!

Establish And Maintain An Efficient Electronic Filing System
Most of us who do business on the Internet are bombarded with Emails on a daily basis. Set up folders within your Email system and file the mail you receive just the way you would a paper document. Give your folders meaningful relevant names but only create as many as necessary. Never leave Emails lying in your Inbox – in no time at all it will become cluttered and unmanageable. Move them to the relevant folder as soon as they are opened. Consider also creating a “Today” and “Later” folder for Emails that require action. There is a tendency to regard Emails as urgent just because they are there on your computer but if something does not require immediate action your time is possibly better spent dealing with other things. Once you have dealt with mail in these folders it can then be filed in the appropriate folder. Note that some Email systems (Outlook for example) allow you to set up rules to automatically move an Email to a specific folder as soon as it is received. This is a great tool if set up correctly so if this option is available to you it is worth investing the time to get it organised.

Set Daily Tasks
The Internet is full of distractions and it is easy to waste hours of your valuable time browsing or being completely sidetracked from your purpose. Before you start work set yourself two or three tasks that you want to complete that day. Write them down and stick them up beside your PC. If you come across something that interests you but is not relevant to the tasks you have to accomplish that day bookmark it and go back to it later when your tasks are completed. I am not a big fan of huge “To Do” lists. I am by nature a procrastinator and I have tried to use them many times in the past without much success. Personally I find it a little demoralising to sit down everyday to a long list of tasks that never reduces in size – there is always something else to do! I find that just focusing on two or three tasks a day produces much better results and more often than not I accomplish more than I set out to do anyway.

Set Aside Time For Dealing With Routine Tasks
Establish a daily routine for dealing with routine tasks and stick to it! By routine tasks I mean things like reading and filing Emails or paper mail, updating your electronic diary, surfing the Traffic Exchanges, reading E Books or other information relevant to your business efforts. Set aside blocks of time in your day to do these routine tasks instead of haphazardly dealing with them in between doing other things. This minimises the likelihood of distractions as mentioned above but more importantly ensures that these routine tasks actually get done on a daily basis. I also suggest you set aside blocks of time for making telephone calls. This can be tricky to do if your contacts are in a different time zone, etc. but with a little planning it should be possible to accommodate these differences. Type up this daily schedule on a piece of paper and hang it beside your PC as a reminder to yourself of what you should be doing. Important Note: one daily task you should always make time for is backing up your files to disc. Anyone who has ever experienced an irreparable PC crash will testify to the importance of this. I know from bitter experience how long it takes to get back to normal if you have not backed up your work regularly – never again!

Prioritise Your Tasks
To prioritise your tasks correctly you need to understand the difference between effectiveness and efficiency, urgency and importance. Effectiveness means being productive, getting results or, put simply, doing the right things at the right time. Efficiency means functioning effectively with the least waste of effort. To be effective and efficient you should be doing what you need to be doing in a way that optimises the outcome. An urgent task may have an impending deadline – it has to be done by a specific date. On the other hand it may be that until you complete a specific task you will not be able to do other things. In that case you may well consider it urgent that the task is completed even though there is no deadline as such. An important task must be done well and needs an adequate amount of time allocated to ensure completion but it is not necessarily urgent. Bearing all these points in mind when you are prioritising your workload ask yourself the simple question “What’s the best use of my time right now?”

And finally ………..

Going To Work In Your Pyjamas
This is a cute concept for a sales letter but the reality is different! I remember the days when I first started working from home and I embraced this idea so completely that I would find myself still in my robe in front of my PC at 4 o’clock in the afternoon - no shower, hair unbrushed, surrounded by coffee cups and breakfast plates … you get the picture. Take your business and yourself seriously. I’m not suggesting you put on a suit every morning but when you report for work (albeit you are reporting to yourself!) be washed and dressed and ready to face the day ahead. Having structure in your day focuses the mind and apart from that if you spend your working days living like a slob what are you going to do on your days off?!


About the Author:
Lorraine Simpson is a Director of Fifth Ace Ltd based in Scotland.
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