Distractions Driving You Nuts?
Picture this: you’re in your home office, ready to start your day. You check your e-mail and find nothing that needs your immediate attention—but a friend sent you a link to an interesting website, so you check it out. After a while the phone rings, and it’s your spouse, asking you for a quick favor. You leave your home office and decide to catch your favorite talk show before going back to work. After all, you do work from home! Then you’re hungry, so you fix a snack and notice you haven’t taken out the garbage or did the dinner dishes from last night. Before you know it, it’s noon—and you haven’t accomplished a single work-related thing. Home office distractions are one of the biggest challenges for those who work from home. Especially if you’re just starting out, it’s difficult to separate “home” from “work” when they’re both right there, all the time. If you work from home, you must teach yourself to tune out home office distractions and be as productive as possible. Here are five quick tips to lessening home office distractions every work-from-home entrepreneur needs:

• Introduce your family to your home office. Though they often don’t mean to be, family and friends are the single biggest distraction for the work-from-home entrepreneur or business owner. Be sure to show everyone in your household your home office, and explain to them that while you’re there, you’re working and should only be disturbed for emergencies—just as though you were located away from home. It may take a while, but once your family understands you have a “real” job, your home office distractions will be significantly reduced.
• Make a list—and stick to it! Writing out a daily to-do list for your home office helps keep you on track. You should either start the day out by listing the things you want to accomplish in order of importance, or make your list the previous night so it’s waiting for you in the morning. When you work from home, flexibility is one of the top benefits you’ll enjoy. Therefore, don’t stress if you don’t accomplish every single item on the list…but do make sure you move them to the list for the next day.
• Give yourself a schedule. Combat home office distractions by scheduling your time, just as you would in a traditional office setting. Map out blocks of time for reading and responding to e-mail, filling orders, researching new leads, and any other routine tasks you have on a daily basis. Don’t forget to schedule time for a break—it’s easy to end up pushing yourself too hard when you work from home. Post your schedule on the door of your home office so your household will know when you’re available for things not related to work.
• Close the door. This is a simple but effective technique for reducing home office distractions. Keeping your door closed not only gives others pause when they want to disturb you, but also reminds you that you are at work. It’s important to separate business from pleasure when you work from home. If you don’t have a dedicated room for your home office, use standing screens or curtains to separate your space from the rest of the house.
• Get wired. Headphones are a home office worker’s best friend. When you find it difficult to tune out everything that may be going on around you, plugging in to your favorite music not only helps you tune out home office distractions, but also lets you relax and enjoy your work. Most modern computers have built-in headphone jacks; you could also invest in a CD Walkman or an MP3 player such as an iPod.

Once you learn to combat home office distractions, you’re well on your way to a successful work from home business that provides you and your family with everything you dreamed it would.