At first glance it sounds like the answer to your dreams. When you're running a business online you get to work from home. You're not frantically scrambling to schedule meeting time around naptime...or diaper time...or dinner time...or that hour and a half a day you actually get to spend with the man or woman you married. You can work on your own time, at your own pace, with all of the perks of being your own boss without all of the responsibility.
At some point, you will be brought sharply back to earth by the reality of running an online business. It won't be long before you'll be working long into the night to meet deadlines, taking your laptop along for the ride on vacation, keeping one eye on Twitter on your mobile while you try to watch your son's football game, and calling off all other non-work dates. All the supposed freedom that comes with online working will have turned out to be nothing but a figment of your imagination.
If you hadn't quite realized it before now, you'll soon have to get to grips with the fact that managing a business demands your time 24/7. Working on the Internet at home rather than traveling to an office each day just means that you don't ever get to disconnect from work. It's something you constantly think about, when trying to spend time with the kids, at mealtimes...at any time.
If you're not careful, an online business can burn you out rapidly, more so than regular work can. After all, you don't leave the office behind you at the end of the working day. Going back to the nine-to-five- grind, however, may simply not be for you. You may also have been fortunate enough to have built up a solid client base and you may not want to give this up. So what can you do to avoid burnout?
Establish set work and calling hours for your clientele.
Sure, flexibility is one of the things we appreciate most about working on the web. Believe it or not though, setting up a stable work schedule and sticking to it is the best thing you can do to keep the business you're running from running you over. When you know when you have to work, you know when you get to have a life.
In setting a schedule, make sure that it's going to suit you. Setting aside eight hours a day for your business may work for you; make sure it's no more than ten hours. Then, unless some emergency crops up, make sure you keep to your schedule. When you've finished your work for the day, clear away everything that's work related, and don't pick it up again until the next day. Doing this will enable you to keep work and home separate, and help you to avoid reaching the point of wanting to give it all up.
Focus your 'to-do' list on the 'must-do-today' items.
Running a business means having a constant and ever-expanding list of things to do each day. You need to take control of the list before it controls you. At the beginning of your work day, put together a list of the tasks that must, without fail, be achieved by the end of the day. You're always going to feel that you should have achieved more, but at least with this approach you'll feel safe in the knowledge that you've completed the absolute essentials.
Buy a cell phone that doesn't have Internet.
This advice is offered with caution, and may not be a realistic option for many business owners. I'm one of those people that needs to be able to check my email when I'm out and about, and I have to face up to the consequence that I spend my entire day in work mode. If, however, you find it difficult to get enough distance between your work and home life, it's a great idea to have a phone that is used for nothing but phone calls. You'll ultimately be grateful for being separated from work for a while.
If you want to stay sane and stop your online business from taking over your life, the solution is to compartmentalize your work and home life as much as possible. What are your best ideas for ensuring that online working doesn't drive you nuts?
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