Don’t Forget About Every Day Duties

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you get home and start checking on your site and before you know it, it’s late at night and time to go to bed (you still have a full time job or you still go to school)? It’s even worse when you realize your time wasn’t even productive. All you have done was browsing and checking out “interesting stuff”. Yes, it’s quite easy to loose focus and spend unproductive time on the internet. But you know that already. What’re you doing here?

I don’t want to talk about how to make online time more productive now. What I want to emphasize is that the above situation can happen days in a row and it can get very frustrating to your family. You end up doing none of your house duties (the dishes, laundry, mowing the lawn, fixing that broken faucet in the bathroom which is costing you money on wasted water and others). Even when all your time spent online proves to be productive, you will still have to face a high resistance from your family if you ignore such duties. That, of course, if you’re working at your home business on a part time basis you’re not seeing any spectacular results which would allow you to say something like: “What do you want from me? I’m bringing the millions in the house! Leave me alone!” You’ll only raise their dissaprovement towards your entrepreneurial attempts.

The truth of the matter is that nobody can share any secrets as to how to solve this problem, simply because there aren’t any. Anyone can share with you what they’re doing on the matter. And I’m going to do just that. After that you can look for solutions on your own.

Note: While I’m a strong believer of the fact that any (work at home) entrepreneur thinks about his/her business on a constant basis - and so he/she should - (read the comment I posted to one of Allen’s posts), I’m not, in any way, encouraging anyone to disregard their duties towards the family. If you don’t have any (you’re single) and you can afford to allow the dishes to pile up until they overflow your sink and if you can afford to live in a dirty house, more power to you. Otherwise, here’s how I take care of business.

With those duties that don’t require my full attention and presence I try to do them while working. That’s not something hard to do. Although I must confess every now and then I get so caught up on things, that I forget I have other things going on that require my attention. Ooops!

The big problem comes with those that need me to be there 100% (physically and mentally). I’ve tried two solutions so far. One of them allowed me to head straight to my computer counting on my strength to put a stop some time before the day was over and take care of my other duties. Needless to say it didn’t work as I don’t have that much self discipline.

The second solution (the one I’ve managed to make it work for me) forces me to fulfill my household obilgations first. Then, once I’m done with those, I “am allowed” to turn on my computer. This one relies on self discipline as well, but I have come to the conclusion that not on as much as the first one.

It also has a second benefit: it allows me to work without having to interrupt my flow when I reach my productivity peak.

That’s about it. It wasn’t easy at first. But I managed to make it work.

What are your suggestions?

Posted in Life vs. Business, Piece of Advice |