As you might be knowing, I am a work-at-home dad for the past so many years. Initially, with a lot of activities, it was a hell lot of trouble when I shifted my workplace and habits from an office to my home, was very much less productive, disorganized and had striven very much to be organized. Later on, I coped up with the nature of working from home on a computer and Internet, with very much responsibilities, focusing on what needs to be done in a particular time frame, setting up goals, and organizing and disciplining myself in achieving those goals. Surprisingly, it is much better now. So here is how you could get rid of depression and be a focused, organized, and disciplined work-at-home dad:
Be Money Motivated
The main factor that keeps me always enthusiastic and energetic is money! The thoughts and feeling my coffer getting filled makes me happy. Money makes money! Investing whatever penny that has been saved, without compromising the middle-class lifestyle, and growing that penny into a dollar keeps the thought processes busy and intact. Be money motivated, see how you could financially grow every year, assess how frugal you could become without compromising on the lifestyle. All these should automatically do the motivation magic for you. For every hour lost, feel yourself as deviating away from your path of getting richer. Just this thought alone should help keep yourself right on track in focusing, organizing and disciplining, and ultimately to financial success. If you are born poor it’s not your fault, but if you die poor it’s your fault!
Eliminate Debt Worries
Worries either start from having no money or plenty of money, but for people like us it is always due to having no money! Excessive debt with high APR is a cause of worry. Always try to keep a very low personal debt to asset ratio, at least less than one. This should give you peace of mind. A worry-free mind is the secret to increased lifespan! After all, why should you borrow troubles from tomorrow to live today?
Get Adequate Rest
One of the main enemies of anyone working from home is sandman! Often I am tempted to crash while at home. I tried all the gimmicks like closing and locking the bedroom door before I start the workday, working inside a closed home office etc. However, nothing came to my rescue except sleeping at the right time for the right duration to overcome lethargy at work. So the only way out is to have 8 full hours of sleep at night, 10 to 6. Whatever hindrances you find, overcome all of them to force yourself to sleep at the right time. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise!
Exercise Regularly
Unless you focus on reducing weight, exercise for an hour regularly in the evening hours. This should make you tired and in turn should help you having peaceful sleep at the instant you hit the sack. Many would say to begin the day with workout but unless you want to lose weight, make it in the evening. Workouts in the morning makes me drained out! Yoga may be of benefit, both physically and mentally. Kill two birds with one stone!
Eat Healthy and Be Hygienic
Once you are at your workstation, petty annoyances like thoughts of food and personal hygiene shouldn’t haunt you. Start the workday after all your morning duties, shower, and breakfast. Skipping any of these will swerve your attention and energy thereby lessening your productivity. A healthy mind lives in a healthy body!
Organize Workstation
A disorganized, ugly looking workstation is always a cause of concern producing a dull effect on your moods. Keep your workstation clean. Clean up your work place at the end of the day. Keep everything that you need to access regularly within your easy reach. Be minimalistic. File the papers in their respective folders rather than having them scattered all around. The same holds good for your computer also. A natural lighted, clean and green working place has a good psychological effect in cheering you up. Cleanliness is next to Godliness!
Take Short Breaks
Take 5 minutes of break every hour. Have some caffeine 2 hours after the breakfast. Short stint breaks and a walk around the home should help you rejuvenate and help alleviate back and shoulder pain, relieve you out of stress and repetitive stress injury if it is a constantly typing job, and off the eyestrain caused by the computer screen. Use shortcut keys wherever possible to save time and energy. Have a short midday nap after lunch. A midday nap markedly boosts brain’s processing capacity. Get back to work with a clean and fresh mind. Can you ever dream of a nap if you work at an office?
Minimize Distractions
One of the major problems when working from home is the distractions all around the home. Reserve a room or a seclusion for yourself as a home office, that resembles your office cubicle, where no one else is permitted. Master the techniques of concentrating. Trying the tips and techniques to minimize distraction should be of help. May be it is a matter of convenience but multitasking is for computers and not for you. Don’t multitask if you seriously want to be productive. Instead concentrate on one task at a time. Multitasking arises out of distraction itself!
Focus on Goals
Right from day #1 of working from home, don’t procrastinate things that need to be done on that day. When working from home, you always feel having ample time but unless disciplined, things will be getting procrastinated forever. Overcoming procrastination and laziness is not a simple task if there isn’t an underlying desire to achieve and excel! Set yearly and monthly (even weekly or daily if you like) goals, health wise, career wise, and personal finance wise. Review the effectiveness of the goals at the end of the time period. Think and act on how you could successfully accomplish the goals. Always make one or two lists of sticky notes of to-do lists and stick it in front of you. Work accordingly to tick one by one on that list. Reward yourself for successfully completing tasks which would have procrastinated forever otherwise. The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire!
Reduce Errands and Others’ Commute
Since you work from home, you have the advantage of reducing the commuting time of your dependents by shifting your home nearby the school of your children or the office of your spouse if she is a working woman. This should save time for them and a hell lot of trouble for you in running errands for them. People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them!
Control Your OCDs
How many times do you feel compelled to check your email inbox, look at the stock ticker or log into Facebook? Everyone has some traits of perfectionism but only when it progresses, it leads to OCD or OCPD (obsessive-compulsive disorder or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder). However, your success lies in successfully taming those perfectionist traits to suit your job. In this Internet age, networking is important for any career but to be productive at work, you need to control your urge. Control logging into social media sites only once a day. Using a RSS reader should help keeping your inbox clean to some extent. Check email only twice a day. Batch process and organize your inbox. Reply or take action at once. Limit replies to five sentences. Delete unwanted mails, archive wanted ones in a separate folder. Two mail IDs should relieve the trouble a lot, one just for the sake of subscriptions and personal stuff and the other for work related, serious mails. Habit if not resisted, soon becomes necessity!
Socialize
Move away from your desk once the work hours are over. Never ever turn back to your computer screen for that day. Man is a social animal! Socialize to relieve your work pressures. Share your thoughts with your close ones. May be you can log into social media sites just for this sake now. Else, overtly depending on the computer and Internet working from home could make you lazy, good for nothing else and probably to Internet addiction disorder. If you can’t do without Internet, you are addicted, and you need some form of rehabilitation!
Take a Vacation
Take a vacation once every six months. Come back refreshed after spoiling yourself into nature’s green somewhere distant, away from home. Have a worriless mind always. You are what your thoughts are!
Hope you find it useful all the aforementioned 13 steps on your effort to be a successful, focused, organized and disciplined work-at-home father. Where there is a will, there is a way!
Fantastic posting Raj. I have been working from home for the past 3 years in eScription. As you have mentioned in your post, I got into all the unwanted habits by working from home. The main bad habit I acquired is lack of sleep. I sleep only for 4-5 hours. Your post is an eye opener for me. Thanks once again Raj.
Yes, there could be two scenarios.
1.) Because of lack of proper time management, you overspend time on any work not according to the priority it deserves and hence less productive. Since your overspend time, you compensate that by sleeping less, but the next day you are drowsy and the chain follows.
2.) If you are good at time management but if you become greedy and tend to over work late into night lacking sleep; again you are physically and mentally stressed out with subsequent consequences.
It is an act of balancing time and money. Every workday at home requires proper planning and execution with the right mindset.