Working from home carries unique challenges.  Having worked outside my home for many years, I looked at my time spent in my space as enjoyable, carefree and relaxed.  As I transitioned into working at home, I struggled with focus.  As I progressed through various ups and downs in life, I discovered just how important focus was for my family, my writing career and me.

Knowing the challenges faced in a freelance market, I welcome you to the first of a five-part series to help you put the F.O.C.U.S back into your writing.

1. Finding Time
2. Obliterate Distractions
3. Create Ideas
4. Understanding Your Responsibilities
5. Streamline Organization

Finding Time

I remember the first time I ran my own business at home.  I thought to myself, “I’ve got the good life.  I can sleep in, work until I’m tired, maintain my home and even schedule all the lunch dates I could imagine with my friends.”  I felt that way until I realized I didn’t even have time to shower, let alone have the pleasurable company of my friends.  The problem wasn’t the number of hours in the day, but the time I spent wasting.

Scheduling:

Take a week out of your month and track all the time you spend doing each activity your life requires.  At the end of the week, look for patterns of idle time, impromptu excursions that steal hours of the day and activities that can be combined, allowing for multitasking.

For me, I noted that my freshest time of the day was often spent playing games, checking forums, emails, and socializing.  I also found that I would attempt to write late at night after everyone had gone to bed, but was too exhausted to think clearly or write effectively.  I discovered many more issues in my ineffective time management that I was able to change.

When I finished evaluating the time I wasted, I found that I needed to flip certain activities to maximize my skills.  I determined that by waking an hour earlier and having coffee, showering and dressing; my senses came alive and my mind was stimulated.  It was easier to sit down at the end of that first hour of the day and write until I was completely submerged in my second hat of Mom.

I became quite obsessed with to-do lists.  By sitting down at night and writing a comprehensive list of all the activities, appointments and deadlines ahead, I was able to sleep better and found myself even more ready to get to business the moment I sat at my desk.  My to do lists cover everything for our home and work:

Household Chores

• Laundry
• Vacuuming
• Which room received it’s weekly scrub
• Appointments/Functions
• Clients
• Doctors
• School related
• Parties/Family functions
• Celebrations such as birthdays and anniversaries

Meals for the Day

• Meats that need to be thawed
• Any missing groceries for meals
• Special instructions

Business/Writing

• Blog posts
• Marketing
• Articles/Ghost-writing
• Queries/Job searching

By spending twenty minutes each night working out a comprehensive list, I knew exactly what the day ahead held and how to budget my time accordingly.  I also found by using calendars and dry erase boards that I could take a glance at the month(s) ahead and plan for correlating photography as needed.

I spent one week of my life recording all of the usual habits I took in my not-so-business-minded ways and found around three hours a day of wasted time that, when channeled correctly, allowed me to continue to write and keep from finding a job outside of my home.

As we progress through this series, stay tuned for the next segment in Focus on Writing with Obliterating Distractions.