Working at Home: How to Beat Procrastination
Procrastination and wasting time is not only an efficiency killer, but can also loose you potential income when you fall into a cycle of spending days, weeks and even months staying “busy” without actually doing any real work.
This time is spent usually doing small task or your favorite down time activities, which you know should come after doing more important work; browsing forums, checking email, watching TV, etc…. It’s easier to stay in your mental comfort zone rather than networking, apply those SEO techniques you learned or making cold calls. Here are a few things you can do to move forward and get some real work done
1. Make a To Do List
Make a list of all the things you need to get done today, tomorrow, this week, and next week. As you go through the list getting things done you’ll find yourself adding more things to your to do list. This will get you moving forward towards your end of the month goal. Keep this list around your work area so it’s ready at hand and visible to remind you of the important task to yet be done. Be sure to jot down ideas when they occur to you also.
2. Keep Your Steps Small
It can be overwhelming when you look at your month’s goal and not have a clue how you’re going to reach it. You need a plan of action to bridge the connection. It is important to keep your steps small in the beginning of your work at home venture so you can reach your goals. Don’t set unrealistic goals such as make “$100,000 by next week” if you’re just starting out. Before you make $100,000 you first have to make $1 For example, if you want to get up a flight of stairs you need to walk up them one step at a time. If you try to jump up them all at once to get to the landing you’re really going to hurt yourself. Keep these tasks small and manageable so you’ll be able to get them done and move on to the next one. Eventually you will reach your goal, maybe even surpass it.
3. Get That First Customer
No matter if you work at home and sell products online or have a small business offline, without customers you don’t have a business. Finding those first few customers is very challenging. A first customer doesn’t have to be a stranger it can be a friend or family member. Give that friend or family member who needs what you have to offer a discount even. If they like your business that friend or family member will eventually recommend your business to someone they know who needs what you have to offer. Friends and family also make great advertisers for your business.
But don’t wait for that friend or family member to spread the word about how great your business is, use part of their payment to advertise online or offline. Cheap methods do exist so don’t spend a small fortune on advertising.
4. Forget about Being Perfect
For new work at home business owners it’s hard to move past the fact that you aren’t the perfect business with all the tools you need and a big budget. Forget about being the perfect business or having ideal conditions; work with what you have now and use your strengths to leverage for development and growth. When you’re starting out you are entitled to not be perfect. But do retain a level of quality you would appreciate if you were a customer of your own business. Just because you run your website from your bedroom doesn’t mean you have to appear that way to the public.
5. Believe in Yourself and Your Business
This may sound cheesy, but if you don’t believe in your business how do your expect customers or anyone else to? You need to give a good impression about your business; it all starts with changing the way you talk about it.
Talk about your company like it already is a business, not like it will be a company some day, it seems you’re not really committed to what you’re doing. What you’re also doing to yourself subconsciously is you are mentally conditioning yourself to treat working at home as a part time hobby. A business is a business not a hobby. People go into business not to pursue a hobby but to make money; a hobby won’t pay the bills at the end of the month.
So instead of saying, “I’m kinda starting my own work at home business” to family or friends, say, “I own my own business,” this shows them you’re really serious about what you’re doing and it also comes in handy to stop the nay-sayer’s and skeptics from telling you to “get a real job.”
6. Look Ahead to the Future
A good way to see if you’ll reach your goal to look at what you’re doing right now. Will reading email get you there? Probably not. Stop reading email, don’t go into forums and chat; do some serious work which won’t waste valuable time and more importantly will get you moving forward toward your goals.
7. Remember Your Purpose
When you reach those tasks you think you hate to do and would rather eat glass than do them, remind yourself of your initial dreams you had on the very first day you started out working at home. What purpose is this work serving you? What dreams did you have for yourself? Do you want to be financially free? Travel the world? Just have more time to spend with the kids?
8. Finally, buddy up with a friend to help you get the work done or get someone who will motivate you when you need it. If you don’t have a someone who wants to team up with you, online forums are a good alternative. Find a forum, which deals with other like-minded people, seek out a member to partner up with. As they say two minds are better than one.
By applying these techniques to you work at home business you will be on the way to reaching your goals.
