Working from home can be a huge blessing. Whether you own a home-based business or you are lucky enough to have an employer who allows you this flexibility, there is no doubt that this type of work arrangement has enormous benefits. However, it does come with some drawbacks, namely finding a comfortable balance between your home life
and your business, as well as ensuring that you are able to achieve an adequate amount of productivity. But, with a little forethought and some rules for managing your time, it IS possible to achieve a balanced lifestyle and increase productivity in both your workday and your household responsibilities.

Start everyday with an accomplishment. Whether it is a work related task or a household responsibility, starting your day with a quick achievement can be just the right motivation to see you through the day. Maybe it is tackling a leftover item from yesterday's to-do list or even just cleaning the bathrooms. Completing a major task early will give you a feeling of success that will motivate you to accomplish even more as the day progresses.

Make your routines more flexible. When working from home, even the best-laid plans are subject to interruptions. Obviously, business meetings and appointments need to be scheduled and, as a professional, it is in your best interest to respect these commitments. However, dealing with routine household chores and daily work requirements can be difficult to precisely schedule when working from home. As tempting as it is to declare that Monday is for laundry and Tuesday is for dusting, or invoices are issued on Thursdays and e-mails are read at 9 a.m., the reality is that when you work from home your schedule is not always predictable. This can be especially true if your children are at home with you during the workday. If for some reason the unexpected disrupts your rigid schedule, your entire routine can be thrown into a tailspin, leaving you frustrated and feeling overwhelmed. Instead, give yourself a more flexible range of time to complete a task. Maybe you do laundry Monday, Tuesday, OR Wednesday. Maybe you handle e-mail messages sometime after lunch and send invoices out by Thursday afternoon. As long as you do not fall into the trap of procrastination (which we will deal with next), this flexible schedule can eliminate feelings of failure when your day takes unexpected detours and interruptions.

Manage procrastination. Everyone is guilty of procrastination from time to time. However, as I mentioned above, chronic procrastination is an easy trap to fall into when you allow yourself a flexible schedule. If you find your flexible schedule is becoming a victim of procrastination, the first thing to do is ask yourself what the real reasons may be for putting a task off for later:

o Do you have everything you need to complete the task at hand?
o Do you know HOW to accomplish the project?
o Are you expecting perfection and thus avoiding the task because you doubt you can attain such perfection?
o Do you know how to begin the task and what the first step actually is?
o Is it an unpleasant or difficult task?

Once you understand the reasons for your procrastination and you are able to address them, with a little will power you can prevent chronic procrastination from getting in the way of your productivity. Insist on separation between work and home. Keeping your home life and your work life as separate as possible is crucial for achieving a harmonious balance between the two. If you choose to work from home, you are willing to accept that the two areas will intersect from time to time. After all, that is a benefit to such an arrangement. It allows you to make your own schedule and be able to attend your child's school presentations in the middle of the day, to get the laundry done while you answer e-mail, or to be able to have your afternoon coffee break in the comfort of your own kitchen. But when the line between the two becomes blurred too much, problems can arise.

If you are fortunate enough to have a home office space specifically designated for your business, be sure to keep your personal files located in a different area, so as not to intermingle the two. If you are sharing your home office space with your business, some form of separation is imperative. One simple way for achieving this is color-coding your files. If you have space for separate filing cabinets that would be preferable, but at the very least, assign one color for all personal files and another for all work files. Also, be sure to keep separate "to-do" lists. While you will inevitably bounce back and forth between the two, keeping separate lists will ensure that your priorities in both aspects of your life receive the importance they deserve.

Learn to use the answering machine effectively. Without a secretary to screen your calls, it is very tempting to answer the phone whenever it rings. Moreover, receiving personal calls while in the midst of completing a work task is a sure way to stifle your productivity. If you do not have a separate phone line to be able to distinguish a business call from a personal call, one simple solution is to invest in caller I.D. That way if the call is from your child's school or from that new client you have been waiting to hear back from, you can interrupt your work for a higher priority. If the call is not imperative, you can let it go to voice mail and check your messages when you complete your current task.

Another idea is to locate your message machine in a room other than your office, or take advantage of the phone company's built in voice messaging program. It does not do much good for you to avoid answering the phone only to have the caller disrupt you anyway as he or she leaves a message. Make an egg timer your right-hand-man. When you work from home, it is easy to allow time spent on individual projects to get away from you. Responding to e-mail is one such time-monster that, if left unchecked, can eat away more hours from our day than we would care to admit. So give yourself a time limit for the task. Set an egg timer for 20 minutes and tackle your e-mail messages, dealing with those items that are of the highest priority first. When the timer dings, commit to moving on to another task.

This can also work well when it comes to dealing with those tasks you often put off. Set the timer for a set amount and then work on nothing else. If you only need to work on a dreaded task for a limited amount of time, it can make diving into it more manageable. It is also easier to avoid distraction and jumping from task to task if you know you only have 20 minutes to accomplish the current project.

This also works for tasks you enjoy, so you do not end up spending too much time on them and falling behind on other jobs. If you find yourself becoming absorbed in research for an article you are writing or designing advertisements for your next campaign, setting a timer can ensure that these activities do not monopolize your entire day.

And do not forget that we all need to take time for a "coffee break," whether we work at home or in a traditional office. None of us can work straight through the day without resting our minds and our thoughts. When you work from home, it is easy to move from business work to home chores, without any downtime in between. Be sure to include breaks into your flexible schedule, but set a timer so they do not get in the way of accomplishing your daily goals.

Invest in a good planner. A good planner is essential. There are many on the market to select from; just be sure to choose one that accommodates the way you work. For example, do you need to see a month at a time, or is a daily layout better? Do you need a space for contacts, business cards, notepaper and other accessories? Or is a basic calendar sufficient?

Something to consider when selecting a method for scheduling your days is to decide whether to go electronic or manual. If you are technologically savvy, you may choose a personal digital assistant (PDA) or computer scheduling program, such as Outlook or Lotus Notes, or a combination of the two. If you would rather rely on pen and paper methods, just be sure the planner is small enough to take with you when you are on the go, but large enough to accommodate both your work and family events and activities. I would highly discourage using two separate planners. Inevitably, some items will mistakenly not be cross-referenced and scheduling problems are sure to arise. Color-coding your work and family obligations by writing them in two different colors will help you know at a glance what type of activities your day, week, and month will have. You could take it a step further and give each family member a separate color, but this may complicate the system, especially if you have a large family. It never fails that the more intricate an organizational systems is, the less likely it is to stay maintained.

Working from home can be a wonderful arrangement. Most workers find themselves much more productive and with a better quality of life than when they faced a daily commute. Nevertheless, care and caution and some basic time-management skills are imperative. Disruptions at home can be even more intrusive than at the office, and the methods of dealing with them can vary, too. By implementing these basic strategies, though, you will be able to focus you time and attention and achieve a working balance and maximum productivity.