Getting More Done = Making More Income
Do you get much done? If a little angel was sitting on your shoulder and watched how you spend your day what would they see?
A lot about ‘how you work’ depends on ‘where you work’.
Obviously working from home has its advantages and it’s the main reason why people quit their jobs so they can work from home and get out of bed at a time that suits them or take along lunch break if they wish, maybe even that holiday weekend without asking a boss for a Friday off or faking a Monday illness.
But if you’re going to work from home at your own business, you still need some discipline when getting things done. Otherwise you will never make enough money to replace your last job.
If you wind up doing less, you’ll soon drift down to bad habits and then have less income and very soon the job ads look exciting again.
Here are some ideas to help you get going;
Hub Office.
Just like how tech startups are going you will now find in most cities large and small are “hot desk offices”. These places have mostly large long trestle tables with heaps of power sockets and Free Wifi for all who rent a fragment of desk space. Coffee n tea is at a central kitchen and you get meeting room hire built into your membership. Lots of training and free workshops are there for the taking and you get inspired to achieve when mixing with fellow small biz entrepreneurs.
Why do it? Well it gets you away from the home environment and amongst people. When you’re around others seeking to develop their own businesses it’s easy to catch the tide and do better yourself. You also have others to chat with and cross pollinate ideas with. Hard to get that if you’re on your own at home.
Coffice.
Like it sounds you work from a “café office”. Why sit at home when you can get out and connect into Free Wifi, power sockets under your seats a bathroom at the back of the café and all the while mix with fellow self-employed while you keep working.
Last year as an example, I wrote 9 books, of which 75% of that writing was at a proper business type café environment. This year I’ve written 10 books (as at early June) and again I’m actively using cafes to do my ‘grunt work’ from.
Fully served office.
A step up from the hub offices, are fully served offices for small business owners. You get to work from a private room of your own, with a locked door. You get a phone answered in your business name and forwarded to you at the office or your mobile phone when you’re out 24hrs a day. You get a meeting room on demand and again the Free Wifi and professional secretarial services on demand. You also get reciprocal rights at other offices around the country all at the same time. Makes you look a like a big operation.
Working from home at a real separate room office.
Maybe why the average at home worker finds it hard to get anything done is the space they work from is a part of a living area and they have no genuine space all to themselves. Unless you have a spare room or a granny flat or garage space uniquely apart from your living area the mere idea of working from home will never get up to full speed for you. Whenever I see a person who is working from their kitchen or living room I’ve also seen a person or a couple who are running their business like a hobby and often going at about 20% to 30% of their business potential.
My late uncle Les Jenkins who lived at Frankston was my best example of a business owner who worked from home; he had a separate office, a professional work room, meeting area for clients and car spaces. He did consulting in the radio communications electronics area, mostly with large companies but also some SME’s. The home was on a corner block on the Frankston-Flinders Road as you drive down towards Mount Eliza.
Even as a teenager I was always impressed by my uncle’s work ethic and tenacious problem solving ability. When he “knocked off work” he simply walked to the other end of the very long house, relaxed in the lounge, read the newspaper or watched TV and chatted intelligently about many of the issues of the day. I can’t ever recall seeing him bring his work to the other end of the house.
Working from home can be a stepping stone.
I once was working from home the first 4 weeks of getting an appointment to a small new company that wanted an “interstate representative” (all on commission by the way). At the time I was married and started working from the dining table. This was fine, I got two sales and the hope of a lot more, but the ‘home office’ was too distracting with space limits and my paperwork load, plus repeated trips to the city for client meetings. At peak hour times things became almost impossible to run.
I then bit the bullet and spotted a serviced office at Bank Place in Melbourne CBD it was cheap and the lady at the front desk was very helpful. Within 2 weeks of being at my little 4th floor window office room my productivity shot up like a rocket. So did my sales and commissions too, including bonus over-rides. Yet I was still doing some minor work from home each day (like reading special reports) I had myself a “pad in the city” to use for client meetings and sales calls. It was fantastic.
Stay focused.
Whatever you have planned in your business, you’ll go further if you have a Meta Perspective on where it’s all heading. Otherwise any distraction that comes along will take you off course and when working at home that’s the last thing you need.
David Newton runs social and business events in both Sydney and Melbourne see his sites: www.meetup.com/BabyBoomersRights and
www.meetup.com/Baby-Boomers-Melbourne plus www.MelbourneWalking.com plus www.The7StepsAuthor.com attend his regular events and meet new people.
