ask the expert | how to deal with guilt, distraction, procrastination & overwhelm when working from home

a post today from our build a little biz partner & 'work at home expert'. Leah Gibbs is the Business Manager and Founder of Work At Home Mums and the Lifestyle Careers Job Board. She runs her businesses from home and as a work at home mum (WAHM). 

Not many mums (or dads) are lucky enough to find a job that would allow them work at home. It really is a win-win situation. You get to earn a small living and you get quality time to spend time with your family.

To be a work-at-home professional certainly requires balancing one’s time between meeting clients, teleconferences, webinars, taking the kids to the doctor, making phone calls, doing the groceries, entertaining the child, arranging play days and keeping the house spic and span plus everything else that you can squeeze within 24 hours.

Balancing family and work life is not easy – we get distracted by family and home life, we have difficulty managing our time, and we feel guilty when we can’t do it all! But with a little help, it can all be managed.

Beat Procrastination:

1. Make a to-do list everyday.

List the things you need to do for the day and identify which ones are considered high priority. Make sure you accomplish the high-priority tasks first. When you can’t finish the task in one day, then you can carry it over the following day. If you haven’t finished a task in a week, there are two possible scenarios. Either you’re procrastinating again or the task is too big that you need to chop it down to bite-size pieces.

2. Reward yourself after finishing a long overdue task.

Pick a difficult task that you’ve been putting off and reward yourself after you’ve finished it. It can be as simple as getting your favorite dessert or buying that dress that you’ve wanted for so long. But indulge yourself only when you have completed your assignment.

3. Limit time spent online.

The Internet can seriously tempt you to procrastinate. Once you logged in to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, you suddenly realize that you’ve wasted two hours of your time. Check your online accounts and emails twice a day only—one in the morning and again, in the evening. This should give you more time to spend on things that really matter. Okay, some of you might say, “But a client’s email may be very important!” Remember that if something is a matter of life and death, your client would call you on your mobile instead of sending an email.

4. Get into the mood.

Working from home is a lot like a classical orchestral symphony. All instruments must be in harmony with one another. A nice home office will help you get in the proper work mood. Clear your table from non-work-related items like your kids’ toys or newspapers. Your laptop should be in great working condition. And if it suits your fancy, play some nice perk-me-up music. You can also add a nice hot strong cup of coffee or hot chocolate to your day. I also love to have my oil burner on with an aromatherapy mix. These little touches can help really inspire and motivate you.

Deal with Guilt & Distraction:

1. Involve your child.

Take your laptop and do your work in the garden or veranda while your child is playing. This gives you the opportunity to watch and interact with your child while doing some work. Mums who are into arts and crafts can also ask their kids to join in. While mum is doing her own projects, her kids can make their own little projects, at the same time. Not only are you accomplishing something for work, you are also bonding with your children.

2. Schedule time-outs.

If you’re taking a break, make sure it coincides with your child’s schedule like meal or play times. This allows you to spend time with your kids without feeling guilty about work. If you’re running errands, bring your child along and take the opportunity to connect. Get out and do the grocery shopping together. Your child can help pick out ingredients and you can both cook something together delicious for the whole family. Mind you the clean up afterwards is not much fun. My daughter adores helping me in the kitchen.

3. Seek your husband’s help.

Even a Superwoman like you needs help sometimes. Don’t be afraid to ask for it from your husband. If you’re just swamped with work and can’t spare a minute, ask Dad to pitch in and help. This will give you a break and cut you some slack to attend to that urgent email.

4. Buy educational books and toys.

It’s never a good idea to distract your kids by making them watch TV although I must admit I have done this in the past. While you’re busy working, you can give educational toys and books to your kids to keep them occupied. Books are great to develop children’s love for learning and educational toys help in cultivating creativity and imagination. Set up a little desk and chair in your office and let your child do their “work”. My daughter loves this.

5. Learn to drop everything.

There will be moments that you must realize that you need to drop everything for your family. In times of emergencies like a health crisis or when your child needs a ride home. Family milestones are equally important and you should never miss those special moments. Soccer games, ballet recitals, birthdays, swimming lessons, sports carnivals, tuck shop duty – this is the stuff that should always take priority.

When things get a little too hectic and you feel you can’t afford any more distractions, stop what you’re doing and breathe deeply. Stretch your patience a little longer and remember why you chose to be a work-at-home mum or home based worker and not a corporate slave chained to a desk from 9 to 5 with a 2 hour commute!

Manage Your Time:

1. Identify your time-wasters.

It’s easy to pick up the phone and chat with a friend. Mums need to identify activities that are considered time-wasters. These may be as mundane as chatting online to something bigger like frequent grocery-shopping or snacking. By knowing what these time-wasters are, you’ll be able to minimize doing these activities and focus on the more important stuff.

2. Make a schedule of your daily life.

The term work-at-home mum has two definitions—a mum who works to earn money and, at the same time, works to keep her home. Mum should set a schedule of her daily life that includes both her work and family activities. A routine will help you manage your time effectively and avoid unnecessary distractions. But don’t forget to include mini-breaks from your schedule to rest, eat, or for play. These are equally important to stay healthy and stress-free.

3. Focus on your to-do list.

A to-do list is a lot like a schedule but this gives you a detailed list of what you must accomplish on a daily basis. A to-do list can include errands, people to email or call, tasks that need to be accomplished, etc. You can make a list in a small notebook or your BlackBerry although I know some mums prefer using Post-It notes to remind them.

4. Use technology.

Technology is both helpful and distracting. Make technology your ally by getting an efficient computer system. Your PC/laptop should be in great working condition and your Internet connection should be flawless. You can also set up auto-responders and mailing lists to be efficient. For mums who have their own websites, you can save time by setting up a Frequently Asked Questions page to minimize the need to reply to similar inquiries.

5. Set boundaries.

Mums who work at home often find the lines between being a worker and a mum blurred. How many times have you caught yourself working on your business during family times? Or when your child asks you to read a story, you find yourself telling him to go ask dad instead.

You must set a time when you stop working and focus on being a wife and a mum. One mum I know quits working at 6 PM. When the clock strikes, she drops everything and concentrates on her family. She doesn’t open her emails or take calls. She figures that these can wait until the next morning.

What planning do you do to manage your time & avoid procrastination? How do you deal with distractions & guilt? Please share your tricks and strategies, we would love to hear from you!

you need to create systems for your biz

when you are just starting with your little biz, perhaps growing from a hobby to a biz or perhaps just starting from scratch, it is really easy to do each task from your kitchen table at it comes. whether it is calling a customer, filling an order, sending a package, writing an invoice, or updating your website… we tend to just do these tasks as we need to, and fit them into our schedules by priority.

but that’s not gonna cut it forever. trust me. one day you will forget to return a phone call or answer an email. you will get behind in updating photos or posting to your blog. you will make a mistake on an invoice or an order. it will happen (it happens to all of us) because one day you will get too busy to run your biz in that “each task as it comes” type manner.  

what you need are systems. systems to deal with each and every task you do for your biz. and truthfully, it is better to come up with systems early on in your biz, but if you wait until you screw something up or get overwhelmed, that’s ok too. it is never too late to do better next time!

what systems do you need?

we all have different types of businesses, different products or services, different methods of selling and delivering our thing, different strengths and weaknesses. so only you will know what systems you need in place to easily accomplish the tasks of your biz.

start by brainstorming each of the tasks you do on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. for each task you list jot down the main steps you take to accomplish it. for long term tasks (say accounting or taxes) list the things you need to do each week or month or for each order. try to list everything you do for your biz, even the smallest or most mundane.

consider the following aspects of your biz: dealing with email, calling customers, filling orders, packaging, posting, invoicing, accounting, paying bills, updating websites, writing blog posts, sending newsletters, answering questions, social media activities such as facebook & twitter posts, scheduling, product creation, and marketing tasks.

create your systems

again, this will be dependent on the type of tasks you have to do for your biz, but the idea of your system is to save you time, help you be organized and to help you do the task quickly and easily.

for instance, something as simple as having bulk packaging materials ready to go and only posting orders on a certain day, rather than rushing off to the post office each time an order trickles in can save you time, money and stress, but will also allow you to be prepared when orders are flooding in, instead of trickling!

try to think of the steps you seem to repeat constantly, the things you are scrambling to get done, the jobs that annoy you each time you have to do them, the requests you often get, the places you seem to lose time… these are all things you can turn into a system.

possible systems that you might put in place:

• creating templates for answering questions, responding to emails
• creating forms for collecting information such as customer details, order details, time sheets etc.
• grouping like tasks together so you only do them once a week or once a month
• creating an organized calendar to schedule tasks, client meetings, phone calls, reminder emails etc.
• getting supplies ready and organized to make posting, packaging, creating info packs etc simple
• setting up folders, lists, notebooks etc. (either physical or online) to collect, sort & organize information

use tools to help you create systems

i am a big fan of google apps so i will mention a few google tools that i have used to create systems:

i use gmail for email – i have about 6 email addresses that i manage in one spot using gmail, i can create labels and folders for my email so i can sort them based on content and priority, and i have a system in place to identify the email i need to go back and respond to. i have set days in which i respond to emails, rather than get off track during my day to day tasks by email.

i use google calendar for organizing and scheduling – i have colour coded catagories for all of the different things on my calendar, including my husband’s work roster, my daughter’s school and social activities, my available session times, my client and order information, writing blog posts, and my ‘task days’. at a glance i can see what i have to do each day, week & month.

i use google docs to create templates and lists i can access any time to deal with email, answer questions, share with clients, collect details, and organize all of the information i seem to access repeatedly. i like having all of this information in one easy to access spot, and now if i have to answer a question twice or do a task twice i will make a template for it.

i also use my android smart phone all of the time for work so it is important to me to have tools that i can access on my phone as easily as i can from my home computer. i am trying to get away from using a physical notebook, which never seems to be handy when i need it, while my phone is always with me.

where to find the tools that will help

last week natalie sisson from the entrepreneur’s suitcase shared with us a few tools that we could use to run our biz. she was kind enough to give me a preview copy of her ebook the ultimate toolkit for entrepreneurial success, so i had a look through it to have another think about the systems i could implement in my biz.

this ebook is chock full of recommended tools, both paid for and free, that can help anyone with their biz. there are some things in there that i don’t need for my biz, but i know that one day i might, so i can see myself using this ebook as a reference as my biz grows. there were a number of tools i had never heard of and great explanations of ones i had but had never thought to try!

what i really liked about the ebook is that it is divided into catagories such as: setting up a virtual office, creating a website, marketing/PR/design, social media, sales and customer service, productivity and time management, team collaboration, outsourcing, finances, and legal help. this way i can concentrate on systems and tools for one part of my biz and then go on to another!

what this ebook doesn’t include, that i wish it did, is a bit stating whether each tool is available as an android or iphone app for my phone. but now that i have read about a few tools that will help me i can go a check for myself, so it isn’t a big problem.

if you want to check out this ebook, natalie is offering build a little biz fans a special discount; just use the discount code bizbuilder at checkout to receive 25% off. 

what is one part of your biz that you could implement a system to make life just a little easier and more organized? what systems have you put in place already? 

{time management} do you ever feel like there is too much to do and not enough time to do it?

is there a word for when you feel like you have way too much to do and not enough time to do it and your instinct is just to hide under the covers and not do anything at all? if there is a word for that please let me know, i would like to be able to put a label on that feeling.

i know i am not alone. along with the many things on our ‘business to-do list’ many of us have children to raise, spouses to care for, friendships to nurture, houses to clean, laundry to wash, errands to run, dinners to cook, exercise we want to make time for, hobbies waiting for our attention and often day jobs that we still must show up for. it is a lot to have on one’s plate at one time, no?

so at the moment i am fighting that panicky feeling. you know the one? where if you think about your to-do list for more than a split second you start to feel completely overwhelmed and feel like there is no way you can handle it. like something has to give.

it occurs to me, not for the first time, that i need to make some changes in my life, because i really, really love what i do – with both my photography business and with helping others build their own business. i don’t want them to be the things that give, and i certainly don’t want it to be my time with my kids, spouse, friends and for myself.

so here is a list of all of the helpful time management and organization advice i have read around the biz blogs lately:

~ assign specific time each day or week to work on your business (vs filling in spots here and there throughout the day as you do other life stuff)

~ separate work time from family time (vs having your laptop or phone on and attached to your fingers 24/7)

~ have a set place to work so that you ‘go to work’ (vs working on your sofa as your kids play barbies and read stories at your feet)

~ break time up into chunks: set a timer to work for 50 mins & take ten to have a break and do something non-biz related

~ schedule your day or week – filling in large tasks first and filling in the smaller, quicker tasks when you have time left in a chunk

~ only check your email/facebook/twitter etc. at certain times of the day (vs everytime your computer beeps as you are trying to get tasks done)

~ prioritize: do the things that you get paid for first, the things that will help you make money next, the things you do for free last

~ ask yourself: if you were only allowed to do one thing today, what would it be? do that thing first.

~ if it is not important to your biz, don’t spend valuable time on it (vs getting stuck working on a fiddly task that is really not that important, in the end)

~ your time is money. that's all. remind yourself of this everytime you do any task or project related to your business. the more you believe this of yourself the better you will get at managing your time.

~ know when to fold 'em - sometimes you just have to dump an idea, project or product that is a time sink, and is probably not going to be profitable (thank you kenny!)

~ work on one thing at once. finish it. then move on to the next. (vs trying to do everything at once, or getting sidetracked)

~ set a reward for yourself for when you finish a task you don’t love doing

~ better yet, outsource the things you don’t love doing. you don’t have to do everything yourself - your time is worth money, as is your sanity!

~ schedule time for yourself: for excercise, hobbies, friends etc. (vs not scheduling it, and allowing things that will fulfil you to fall by the wayside)

~ say no. you don’t have to accept every job, say yes to every client, help every friend for free, join every committee, go to every lunch date

now, if you will excuse me i might just go hide under the covers for a while after all. my cozy bed, my favourite tv show and a glass of wine... sometimes a break from reality can do wonders! my to do list can wait until tomorrow. and, you know, everything does get crossed off of it eventually.

(update: i wrote this last night. i think just venting about how i was feeling helped a lot - so add that to the list: have someone to talk to that understands what you are going through! and of course my date with that glass of wine and some true blood helped too.)

what are your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to juggling your home biz with your home life? what time management and organization strategies work for you? please add a comment, i would love to hear from you!