Achieving FOCUS in Your Home Business

Four Tips on How To Manage Your Work Duties

As I write this, my pre-teen son is hassling me for a snack – he just arrived home from school with an empty stomach, and caught me in the middle of “work.”  Working at home is an on-going challenge to the life balance for sure, especially when there are children living in that same home.  It is specifically difficult to stay focused on the job at hand and the direction of a business when said children are present and hungry!

In all seriousness, though, work from home professionals are always on the prowl for advice on balancing work duties and family, as my situation currently reminds me.  Here are four tips to keeping a strong focus on your home business, in spite of your circumstances:

1.       REVIEW your priorities, REVISE your plan.  Sit down, scratch out a priority list for your business this year; what do you want to achieve in productive activity?  In profit?  In growth?  Now, examine your personal priorities: How important is family time to you?  What reasons motivated you to decide to work from home in the first place?  Was it the desire to hands-on parent more?  As you look at your business priorities in comparison to your personal ones, make sure they interact appropriately.  For instance, if your business goal is to grow by 25% in sales, you may need to output at least double that much in effort to produce those results.  That means less time available for other things, which could translate into less family time or attention.  Is the family on board with this decision, and capable of handling it?  This is just a brief idea of what needs to be laid on the table as a business owner, and family manager.  As your own experience with business and family needs are unique, and specific to you, the solution for finding a determined direction and plan will also need to be customized.  The point is to make a plan, and go from there.

2.       DECIDE – Focus on the plan no matter what. Distractions can be detrimental to your business, and I’m not talking about your children interrupting you!  Too many ideas, information overload, draining clients; these are all very real and troublesome distractions to your focus.  What it really boils down to is making a decision: a decision that you are going to achieve your goals for your business no matter what.  We all wish it was easier than that, that there is a magic formula, easy trick or miraculous event to get us from the idea to the result, but there isn’t!  Once that decision to focus on your plan has been made, other good decisions follow which lead to small successes, which lead to more successes, and then one day, you stop for a minute and look at your business and realize you are succeeding!

3. STOP making excuses for why you can’t. There will be times when you will disappoint someone, either in your business or in your personal life.  This is unavoidable, because you cannot please everyone all the time.  What you can take responsibility for, however, DO.  If there is a way to meet with your client AND make it to Billy’s game, then make it happen.  Making excuses for why you can’t do something or fulfill a responsibility will take the positive focus off your performance, and put it in a negative light on the person, which is never a good thing.

4. NEVER Give up. Sometimes you do everything in your power to stay focused and achieve results, but life gets in the way.  It happens to everyone at one time or another, the key is to keep focused on the purpose of your business.  If the purpose is still there, the focus has not really been lost, just shifted for a little while.  While you can’t keep hindrances from occurring, you can keep the goal in center vision.  Never give up on your goal.

Although distractions may come and complete concentration may go, you can keep a central path cleared on your way to achieving success in your home business.  Just use these four easy tips to re-focus on that goal, take a deep breath, and plunge back in to the daily routine.  And don’t forget to smile the next time you are interrupted by someone needing a snack!     

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