Get Back on Track in Your Home Office

Get Back on Track in Your Home OfficeDo 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?

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