Whenever I talk with someone who wants to work at home, there is always a moment where they say something like “That sounds hard” when I tell them how to be successful at it. It seems most people believe that when they get to work at home, life is easy, and they can throw all discipline out the window, and “do their own thing”. Inevitably, this gets them in trouble. So here’s a simple process, that is more powerful than most imagine.
Go ahead and Work at home, but track it
The secret to all winners, like Olympic trainers – is this: They track everything! Olympic trainers track every calorie, every workout and even micro-nutrients for their athletes. Do you track all of your efforts when you work at home?
How to track your efforts to work at home
Are you tracking how much time you spend when you work at home making sales calls? Are you writing down how long you spend every day on improving your skills so you can work at home more efficiently? Even the improvements (or not) of your relationships with family, friends and even your spouse are important things to keep track of. I can almost guarantee that you need to be doing this. How? If your life isn’t working as well as you’d like – odds are, that you’ve gotten derailed. You’ll get your life back on track, when you start tracking it.
Tracking works because it gives you increased awareness of your life. Some things you simply do not want to lose sight of – like your family.
First steps for tracking work at home efforts
To begin, start slow and easy. Just track one habit for one week – something that has the greatest control over you and your time when you work at home. Once you start to see results, you’ll just naturally want to start tracking other parts of your life. Soon you’ll chose to track everything in your life.
So here’s what you do first: Commit to what you are going to track, and a start date – now, before you finish this post.
I am going to start tracking _________________ on [month/day/year].
Next, each day starts with the date at the top of a fresh page. Record everything. Do this for a week. You will probably be shocked at how ‘things’ have been escaping you before now. Now… Do it for three weeks. Trust me, stick with this and you’ll be so amazed with the results you’ll keep going, and keep adding new things to keep track of!
To Your Success!
John