Do you ever fall behind schedule or lose sight of your goals in your home office? Maybe you planned on spending 5 hours a day in your home office, but at the week’s end you are frustrated because the To-Do list is still a mile long? Whether it’s the kids, unexpected repairs on the house or the “back-to-school” bug the kids bring home…the busyness of every day life can interrupt your well-intentioned home office hours.
So how do you get back on track,feel productive and get out of your slump? I recently heard a great piece of advice about spending 30 minutes totally focused on only one task at a time. Focusing on one thing at a time is not a new idea, but in today’s world of cell phones and social media…sitting down for 30 minutes to work on one thing and shutting everything else off sounds like a novel plan!
Don’t get me wrong – I believe multi-tasking is an important skill and as a mom of three, I know first-hand that there are times when you must be able to juggle many things simultaneously. But finding 30 minutes to work with laser-like focus on one task can sometimes seem like an impossible dream!
But when you think about it – 30 minutes: the time it takes to watch a sitcom, the waiting time in a doctor’s office – is not an incredibly long time to devote to something. I’ve spent 30 minutes in the waiting room at my daughter’s orthodontist doing things for business – writing postcards, reading reports – and since I cannot be distracted there by social media, phone calls (if I turn my cell phone on silent) and laundry (!), by the time we leave, I’ve checked a few things off my To-Do list!
So, I’m making it a point this week to schedule time-slots of 30 minutes throughout my daily schedule to work on just one task. Some projects are going to require more than one 30-minute block and that’s fine: the result is a finished project!
The real test to get back on track – can you sit at your desk and focus on just one task, without checking email, logging on to social networks, responding to instant messages…? Well, drawing on my “mom” experience, I figure that if I can focus on helping one of my kids with homework for 30 minutes and put everything else aside to give her my undivided attention, then I can definitely spend 30 minutes working on the most important tasks in my home office.
Sounds like a new goal for the week: How many 30-minute focused blocks of time do I spend on my business? I’m going to start with 4 a day! How many can you do this week?