Starting your own business is fun, exhilarating and rewarding – at the same time as being terrifying and exhausting. For many people those extremes are part of the appeal.
There’s one thing that is certain at the start of a new venture: there is a lot of hard work and many early mornings and late nights ahead of you.
Your new business will consume your time and energy in a way that no job controlled by someone else ever could. You need to keep an almost laser beam focus on what you are trying to achieve and how you go about doing that.
But maintaining that focus in the long-term is difficult – especially if you work from home.
Thousands of businesses are started from spare bedrooms every year, which is very smart. Keeping overheads low is a key component of ensuring the success of a new venture. For the first six to 12 months this can work very well.
The novelty of being your own boss and knowing that nothing will work until you make it happen can keep you well motivated and clear of distractions.
But after you have proved your business is viable and settled into a routine, things can start to change. If you’re not careful, you can start to develop a kind of “cabin fever”, because you are seeing the same four walls whether you are at home or work.
For many home workers, the real test is on the first beautiful sunny day of the year. They see the sunshine, watch their unhappy neighbours tramp off to work, and realise that as their own boss they could take a day off and enjoy the sunshine.
Most will shrug this off and carry on working. But for some, it will be too much of a temptation. Warning: this is a symptom of loss of focus, and a sign of potential damage approaching your business.
Don’t get us wrong, it’s essential to have time off. But you need to plan that time and work your business around it. Be in control of it. Taking a day off just because it is sunny is not the action of a focused entrepreneur. And if you do it once, you will probably do it again. That can become habit forming behaviour which could lead to your business losing you for a couple of days every week.
This is the danger of working at home. Without the physical and mental separation of having a workplace to travel to, you can find home and work lives merging. And in this instance, it is the home life taking over the work life (most small business owners find the problem is the other way round).
Luckily there are five simple things that you can do to help you keep your focus when working from home year in, year out.
1. Keep work and home strictly separate
Any business needs space even if it’s just a desk and a computer. If you have a spare room that can be dedicated to your business, be very strict about using that room only for work. Use the room as a psychological barrier between your personal and professional lives. When you are at work (in your room) act as you would working for someone else – keep personal calls to a minimum and stay focused.
At the end of each working day shut the door and mentally switch back to being at home. You could find it easier to relax this way. If you don’t have the luxury of a spare room, clear your work away at the end of each day to put in that psychological divide.
2. Set rules and stick to them
The worst thing you could ever do working at home is switch on the TV for a bit of background noise. Jeremy Kyle is not appropriate for your business and will distract you (unless you are in the business of DNA tests, that is). Set a rule of no TV and stick to it. Same with personal phone calls or emails.
Have separate phone lines if you can afford them (easy with VOIP internet phone lines) and keep personal emails to a separate account that you don’t look at during the day. Beware of online tools such as Facebook and Twitter dragging you away from what you should really be doing.
It can also be sensible to set clear working hours so you know what you should be doing and when. For people going from a job to running their own business, sticking to the same habits of working weekdays and having weekends off can be sensible.
3. Use goals and rewards to stay motivated
Nobody can keep going forever without a bit of stick and carrot. It is essential to set clear goals to ensure that what you are doing is helping your business. Goals can be daily, weekly – whatever suits you.
Now and again give yourself a reward for achieving something difficult. It can be as simple as getting a pizza in, or having an evening out. Either way when you achieve your goal, enjoy your reward and look forward to doing it again!
4. Get out
It makes sense to build a number of opportunities to leave your home office into your working week. If you need to meet clients or associates do it at their office or a hotel or cafe. If your work doesn’t require you to leave home, then why not reward yourself with days working out.
Many cafes and most branches of McDonalds have free wifi, so why not take your laptop with you and have regular McDonalds Mondays? Hotel lounges can also be a great place to work without interruption, and often only for the price of an expensive cup of coffee. You may also have serviced offices near you that will rent you a room or desk for a few hours,
5. Connect with like-minded people
One of the hardest things about working from home is the loss of contact with other people. So find some people who think like you do and meet up with them. There are plenty of networking meetings in most areas, and you may find joining a business club that meets regularly a valuable way to stay in touch with the local business community.
Non-business groups such as Rotary and Round Table are often populated by local business people. And if you can’t or don’t want to leave your home, then look online for forums dedicated to general business chat or discussion about your particular sector.
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