Keeping the motivation alive when working for yourself

I think he most difficult part of running a home based business is keeping the motivation to work alive. Working at home has a lot of benefits but there are also a lot of distractions and temptations we face working at home.

Some people think that working at home means you can get up later in the day and work whenever you want. While this technically may be true, it can lead you to the welfare line faster than if you had a J.O.B. (Just over broke job).

One way to keep the motivation alive and you focused on your new job which is finding legitimate ways to make money at home, is to keep a day planner. Some people can use just a legal pad to jot their schedules down on, personally I need a planner and I only use Franklin Covey planners at this time only because I haven’t found a planner that offers as much time management and organization support as Franklin Covey does. A lot of Smart Phones now have built in planners that can help keep you on track. I personally use a combination of the paper and electronic planning systems.

In your planner write down everything from the time you will wake up to the time you will go to bed, literally! More than likely you will be working harder and longer for yourself than you did at any job you have had in the past! I personally start my day at 6AM and am even considering moving my start of the day to 5:30 just so that at the end of the day I can retire earlier and spend more time with my son.

Don’t make your Day Planner all about business. Include rewards to yourself also and even more importantly include time out for relaxation in your day. Even if the relaxation is only 15 minutes a day, it is very important to schedule “quiet time” every day. Remember the old saying, All work makes jack a dull boy, it’s true and it a sure fast lane for exhaustion to set in. When you are physically and/or mentally exhausted it opens up cans of worms for other problems to happen such as loss of income, depression, anxiety and even more that I will not list here.

Take some time to plan every day and you will be self motivated when you show the fruits of your labor paying off!