Personal Blog - Social Media, Personal Branding

Home Office Organization

Fall is always the time of the year when I think about home office organization: cleaning out my files and setting up more efficient work areas. I don’t know why I get the urge this time of year – maybe because I know cooler temperatures are finally around the corner here in Florida and our one change of season is coming up.

There are a lot of great tips out there on how to organize a home office; here is a great article from Entrepreneur.com for setting up a home office on a budget .

One of my best tips is to find an organizing buddy. If I try to do a major re-organization on my own, I usually get overwhelmed and distracted, which just leads to another mess in my home office.

Having someone work with you keeps you on track and focused. Since your organizing buddy is not emotionally attached to any objects you’ve collected, he/she can quickly help you let go of things that aren’t serving any purpose or aren’t making you more productive.

One of my daughters was a big help to me recently when we set out to organize my home office. She’s a senior in high school this year and I can already tell that her college dorm room will be organized in an efficient way (I just hope her roommate-to-be likes organization as much!).

Working together, we quickly cleaned out files and cabinets; came up with a new system for keeping the piles of papers to a minimum on my desk; and even found a few useful things we forgot we had in the house.

My home office organization wouldn’t be complete without help from a few other “buddies” – my cats. Any time we change things, they need to check out the new set-up

…or just claim their space:

home office organization, cats in the home office

Whoever your organization buddy may be, you will find that having someone help you makes you more motivated and gives you new ideas to create a more productive work area (my daughter was disappointed we didn’t have a label maker – she really wanted to label things for me!). You and your organizing buddy will end up accomplishing your home office organization in no time!

Get Back on Track in Your Home Office

Get Back on Track in Your Home Office 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?

Family Support for Home Business Goals

Four Tips to Get Family Support for Business Goals

Does your family support your home business goals? When your office is in your home, you need the help of your family to maintain a good work/life balance. But it’s not always easy to get. Children may not understand that you can’t just drop everything to take them to the park on 5 minutes notice; or that phone time means quiet time.

My kids are teenagers now so it’s easier to ask them to give me a few hours undisturbed in my office, but when my youngest was in preschool I worked out of my home as an independent rep for a cosmetics company. It was a challenge then to get my family’s support for my home business goals. I went from being a full time stay-at-home mom to a work-at-home mom and it wasn’t easy for my kids to understand why I couldn’t just put everything on hold for a last minute request.

The start-up phase of a business (or the launch of a major campaign in an existing business) usually requires a good bit of your time to learn new skills and get systems in place. It may be a struggle at first, but it is important to find a balance between your career and your home life now, so your family doesn’t resent the time you have to spend on the business over the long-term.

So how do you get your family to support your home business goals when all they see is mom or dad spending time away from them?

(1) Communication

Have a family meeting or find a quiet time to sit down with younger children and explain to them why you are starting your business. Usually, part of the “why” we work from home is to be able to spend more time with family instead of working 9-5 in an outside office, so let them know that is the main goal.

Explain your schedule in concrete terms: you need to spend an hour working while they read or watch a movie, then you can all go swimming together.

(2) Cooperation

Get your family’s support by including them in the goal-setting process. Teach them that if everyone works together it’s easier to reach family goals. If you are making a goal poster, ask your kids to help design it. Are you tracking your progress on your goals? Let your kids fill in your progress chart.

Maybe your kids want to set some goals too – reading a certain number of books or swimming a certain number of laps in the pool – support their goals and measure your success together.

(3) Participation

Make them a part of your business in some way, no matter how small. My daughters were much younger when I was a cosmetics rep and they enjoyed looking at all the make-up samples. I would let them help prepare any samples I distributed. If I was stuffing gift bags, I would let my girls choose sample colors and fill the bags. Then we’d all go make deliveries (sometimes stopping at a fun place for them on the way home).

My daughters are older now and in my current business, they really do help! My kids help with mailings, proofreading – and their video/photo-editing skills are very valuable! I’ll pay them for special projects so they are more than happy to participate. They are learning valuable entrepreneurial lessons too!

(4) Celebration

Earn your family’s support by sharing the celebration when you reach a milestone or a goal. When you reach your financial goal for the week, take the family out for ice cream. If you’ve earned a promotion or a new title in your company, “promote” your kids as your assistant – if you receive a certificate, make one for them too.

If you are planning on using part of your income for a special occasion (a trip to an amusement park or a weekend at the beach), use a special container to start holding the funds. Your kids will get excited as they see the vacation funds accumulating.

Gaining family support for home business goals may take some creative thinking and persistence, but in the long run your family’s support is going to help you keep a healthy balance in your career and home life. Maybe more importantly, as they watch you find a balance now, your children are learning important skills on how to balance their future career and home life.

“If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.”
Brian Tracy

photo credit (derived from): GoodNCrazy via photopin cc

3 Tips for Establishing Daily Routines in Your Home Office

3 Tips for Establishing Daily Routines in your Business

We are starting our back-to-school preparation in my house since school starts in just 3 weeks. Getting my kids back into the daily routine of the school year is always a challenge, no matter how old or (seemingly) independent they are.

As I watch my kids get back into their daily routines for school, I’m reminded of how important it is to establish routines for a home office – instead of just waking up with no plan or no schedule for the day. Our kids perform better and are less stressed when they know what is expected of them every day. And that works for us too.

The importance of establishing routines in your home office is huge: with no one but yourself to measure how much work you get done each day or how long a lunch break you take, every little work habit (good or bad) is going to have a dramatic effect on your business success.

The task of sticking to daily routines and habits is the challenging part – everything looks so much easier to implement on paper than in reality.

We’ve heard many times that it takes 21 days (or attempts) for something to become a habit. So make that your first goal: get your calendar out and put a target date on it. Keep track of yourself as you stick to your daily business routines for 21 days (or attempts).

Everyone’s routines will be different depending on your home business, but breaking down your routines or systems on a monthly, weekly and daily basis can help you keep it all organized and do-able.

1. Assign specific tasks to certain days of the week.

For our business that means that accounts are invoiced on Mondays, payroll is done on Fridays; blogs posts are assigned certain days, the newsletter is sent the same day every week, and so on.

2. Tackle the most challenging tasks at the time of day when you are at your “peak performance”.

For me this means that my most difficult tasks (or the ones I like least) are done in the mornings. I’m not a night-owl and would never tackle a complicated spreadsheet after 8pm – getting those more difficult tasks done early gives me a sense of accomplishment that adds momentum to whatever else I work on that day.

3. Don’t give up when the unexpected happens.

Many times, I’ve put a brand new business system into place only to miss the deadline when something unexpected happens with the house or the kids. Because my office is in the house, it sometimes seems much easier to just “give up” on establishing business routines – “What was I thinking? How can I make any routine stick when the washing machine breaks, the kids get sick or family drops by?”

Just remember that no routine in your home business is going to be perfect overnight. That’s probably why it takes 21 days (or attempts) to turn an action into a habit. So if you didn’t stick to your new routine this Thursday, that’s okay! Plan to stick to it next Thursday. By plugging away, little-by-little, day-by-day, the routines you are establishing in your business will become second nature…but only if you keep on doing them!

When you establish and stick to daily routines in your home office, your productivity will benefit. With systems in place, you eliminate the stress from planning and reacting to the same issues every week – you are now in the habit of getting those tasks done at the assigned times. You can then find time to be more creative – to set higher goals and reach for bigger dreams.

“The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.”
Mike Murdock

photo credit (derived from): markus spiske via photopin cc