Standing Out

Have you ever had one of those days when you just don’t feel like working from home? I’ve only been at this for a little over six months at this point. If you’ve got a lot of experience with this, share some secrets for overcoming the work at home blahs!

I’m thinking trying these. If you have thoughts or advice, please share!

• Changing the scenery? Maybe moving things around might help.
• Taking it outside…or away? I could go work from somewhere with Wi-Fi today just to break up the monotony a bit.

–Tia

Does this seem familiar to you?

Wake up.

Start working (notice I skipped brushing teeth, getting coffee, getting dressed…)

Stop working to open the door/gate/whatever for UPS/FedEx/USPS person.

Resume working

Stop working to get dressed/brush teeth/eat breakfast

Resume working

Stop working to pick up the clutter, start a load of laundry, feed the dog.

Resume working

Stop working to [fill in random household chore here]

It can be extremely tempting to tend to household chores and similar things when you work out of your home. But have you ever considered the real impact on your productivity that comes as a result? It’s major. It can take me twice as long to do something if I keep stopping to tend to the house.

The laundry can wait. If you didn’t work from home, it would have to anyway. You work from home because it’s a nice perk, not because you can work and do the dishes and dust the living room and make the kids’ beds.

I suppose you might work from home so you can do those things, but I challenge you to spend one weekday brushing off all that stuff until 5 PM. Then, stop working and tend to your home. You’ll be surprised that you accomplished way more when you focused on just one thing at a time.

To our success,

Tia

To go along with my new website, I’ve decided to give this blog an overhaul as well. Not just in design but in platform & audience.

A lot has happened in the past week. Most of you know by now that I’m a virtual assistant and work from home mom. The whole reason that I even started a company was so I could go beyond just myself and possibly change the lives of other single moms by providing work from home opportunities for them through it. Well that vision is finally becoming a reality and I’m THRILLED about it. I have another VA on board with me named Stefanie and I’m glad to help her get on the road to success.

There really is nothing better than the feeling you get by helping someone else!

So that said, I’m going to be focusing mainly on Virtual Assistant and Home-based success in this blog now. I’m very excited about this new direction and am hoping the reach will grow and many more women like Stefanie will come to know financial freedom through working for themselves.

To success!

Cheers,

Tia

As a small business owner, you’re probably used to working all weekend. I know that I am. Again, in my earlier post about workahol-ism, I don’t generally consider my work “work”, but for the purposes of this blog I will.

I had a work-free weekend on Saturday and Sunday and I must say it was wonderful. I’m in this very stressful state in my business where I’ve got a ton of work and great clients but I’m also trying to add substance and foundation to my business at the same time, so I’m busily formulating marketing plans, learning new biz dev strategies and trying out every suggested tool out there to make me more successful. In the midst of all that, I’m trying to do my work so that my clients continue to love me and refer me.

So, “not” working (although I do always check email at least once during the weekend) this weekend was a welcome break for me. I hung out with my son, went to church, made progress on my moving plans (moving to Erie, PA in two weeks) and thought/worried about things unrelated to work. It was surprisingly freeing and refreshing!

My tip for the week: PLAN to not work this weekend. Yes, make a plan. In order to not work this weekend, you will probably need to take some measures to ensure that everything is covered and that you don’t have to work. TAKE THEM. If you never take a single piece of advice from me ever again, take this one. You will come back to work on Monday refreshed, revived, renewed and with a new sense of purpose for your business. And get this: that feeling never gets old. Never. You can have the same feeling EVERY Monday, if you really want to. Just try it. And if it doesn’t work for you, you can come back and say, I told you so.

OK so maybe not better, but different in a very good way.

I was drafting a status e-mail to one of my clients tonight, and it was amazing the clarity that came as a result of it. When I sit down to write a to-do list, it always fills up with junk! When I sit down to write a status email - lo and behold…a to-do list! Really. I suddenly had my to-do list (or a portion of it) and it came so much more easily to mind than it would have if I had said to myself “Self, let’s come up with a to-do list.”

So here’s my advice. Draft status memos for each of your clients (even if they haven’t asked for one). As you’re drafting the status, categorize it by completed, and to-do (this week) and to-do (next week - or just skip next week. One week at a time!). You’ll discover, if you’re like me and you have a lot of work, that as you’re typing up your ‘completed’ section, all of your ‘to-do’ tasks become very obvious. Write those under the to-do section and sub-categorize them by day. Then, put all of your to-do tasks from all of your clients in a list.

Tada! To-do list magic. AND status memo magic. Status memos are extremely helpful even when they aren’t requested. For one thing, they help you see how much work you’re actually doing for your client! Two, they show you how you’ve spent your time (most of my time today was spent working stuff out with the baby). Three, they put your work right in your face so you have a better understanding of your workload so that you can say “yes” or “no” with confidence to future requests.

Cheers! Enjoy making your status memos!