Following my Own Advice on Working from Home

I wrote what I thought to be a pretty good article on the Top Ten Working from Home Mistakes based on the things I knew I did wrong to completely burn myself out when I ran Aminion Design out of my home. But in these first start-up weeks, I am having a very hard time following my own advice.

The bad habit rules I have broken:

 

OK, I was feeling like I was doing worse than I am – another thing that can happen when working for yourself – I start putting some high expectations on what I can accomplish, and feeling crappy when I don’t do everything I hoped I could do. In fact, instead of developing content today, I spent almost the entire day building up my site development plan – making sure I steered clear of bad habit rule number 4 (Starting without a plan). And I am resolving right now to ensure I take the kids out tomorrow for some fun stuff for at least 1.5 hours, to ensure I don’t break rule numbers 2 (Working at all hours of the day or night) and 9 (Spending too much time at home).

My kids have been craving my attention all day – and it’s never fun to shoo them away to pay attention to a computer. But in order to get things accomplished that will have to happen sometimes.

Working at home is more about balance than working outside of the house in my opinion. When there is little to no separation between work, home, success and family, it’s easy to lose sight of what needs to be balanced out. Good thing I wrote up my top ten list in order to remind myself of the things that can derail my success. ]]>