Working from home has its attractions and advantages, but the big challenge is maintaining your focus when the fridge and Facebook are calling your name.
You quit your job and set up your home office. Now you’re ready to rock and roll into your freelance career. But wait, what’s that? Oh, it’s the call of the fridge and Facebook.
Being the master of your own schedule is liberating and heady. You feel powerful, you feel inspired and…you feel like scrolling Facebook. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Let it happen, sometimes. Scrolling on Facebook and pithy updates on Twitter can be good for you. Here’s the trick to it: schedule the time.
I call it FA time, and you can assume whichever meaning for that acronym you like. It’s here where you might come across a news article that makes you think, be inspired by some new technology that’s just entered the market or, hey, just catch up on those baby photos you’ve been waiting to see from your cousin’s sister’s half-brother’s wife.
I like to schedule a full FA day, if I can, because that’s the time where I get to think about concepts, come up with ideas or be inspired by what the great, big online world might have to offer. I aim for one of those a month, but don’t often achieve it. That’s okay, though.
But then there’s time to get serious, close those browser tabs and focus on your to do list. Schedule the heck out of everything – even your lunch breaks, inbox checks and picking up the kids from school. You laugh now, but you’re not the one who has forgotten to fetch a kid or two, because she was so engrossed in what she was doing.
I find that setting aside times for tasks in my calendar not only lets me plan better, but enables me to “win” a few hours every week, which I can then use to cover for emergencies. I get a great feeling of accomplishment when I delete completed tasks. There’s no better feeling than walking away from your computer each day, knowing you did a good job.
Ah, but the allure of the fridge. When you’re stuck with something, or can’t quite pinpoint the sentence you’re trying to type, it’s tempting to head to the fridge for a snack. Schedule your lunch and pack a lunchbox for yourself, even if you are working a mere 10 metres away from the fridge.
If there is one thing that’s probably saved my motivation, my concentration levels and my tendency to get distracted, it’s WhatsApp for Web. Instead of me breaking my thought and picking up my phone when a message arrives, it now happens on my screen and I can choose whether to respond immediately or not.
Here’s the big lesson of being the master of your own time. You are entirely responsible for what you do with it. Yes, that does mean you can scroll your Facebook newsfeed for a little while. Just put it in your calendar and I’ll allow it.
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