When you work for yourself, you need to be accountable to yourself. When you’re self-employed, you’re all you have. Unlike a day job, when you have deadlines, performance reports, and a boss to report to, you’re all you have.
Even if you have an accountability partner, you’ll have to hold yourself accountable the majority of the time. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll start slacking off or postponing.
Your work-life balance will be thrown out of whack, and you’ll be continually striving to catch up at the expense of other aspects of your life.
One of the most effective strategies to hold yourself accountable is to keep a journal. Make a detailed account of your day. Did you follow through on your promises to yourself? Or did you manufacture excuses and put things off?
Staying on track requires identifying and addressing trouble areas immediately. Your work will improve, and you will have more time to relax and socialise.
A to-do list is an excellent way to keep track of your daily tasks. Write down three of the most critical chores that must be completed that day.
Your goal is to complete those three things first thing in the morning. In his book “Eat That Frog,” Brian Tracy discusses this. The remainder of the jobs will be a breeze once you’ve completed the challenging ones.
The essence of life is time. It’s a good idea to start by writing down what you’re doing every hour in a notepad. This personal time management will assist you identify where your time is going.
Seeing how many hours are wasted on minor hobbies like social networking or talking on the phone, for example, can be eye-opening.
This amount of discipline may appear to be restricting your life and not enjoyable at all. However, the opposite is true. When you’re disciplined during the workday, you get more done in less time and encounter fewer issues.
This gives you more time to do what you enjoy rather than continuously putting out fires at work.
To make the process easier and more achievable, every main goal should be broken down into smaller micro goals. Break your big aim down into smaller monthly and weekly benchmarks. Make a list of activities you need to do every day to meet that weekly goal.
It’s only a question of time before you achieve the primary objective if you meet the micro ones. This way, instead of being overwhelmed by the mountain of a goal in the distance, you’ll be focused on the task at hand.
Take time each day to praise yourself for doing a good job. You should give yourself a pat on the back to motivate yourself, just like you hold yourself accountable.
Simply assess what went wrong, pick yourself up, and keep moving forward. Every day is another opportunity to improve and enhance yourself. Don’t allow yesterday’s mistakes hold you back today.
Spillover occurs when your professional and personal lives begin to blur. In the traditional sense, this would imply that your spouse or family calls you at work.
While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a fast 2-minute call, it is still a distraction that might throw you off your game. You want to be on the go when you’re at work.
If you receive a call from home informing you that your neighbor’s child has broken the house window while playing ball, you will be concerned. You might be casual about it or moderately irritated, depending on your personality. A person who is extremely worried may become enraged.
When you work from home, it’s even more difficult to avoid spillage. For starters, you’ll most likely be able to hear distant family members. There will be distractions even with noise cancelling headphones.
What level of overflow is acceptable?
There is no right or incorrect answer in this situation. Generally speaking, the less spillage, the better. You want to concentrate as much as possible. Let’s have a look at a few things to think about.
It’s unavoidable that your career will require more attention at times… and that your home duties will take up more of your time.
If you have a tight deadline looming, restrict your time with your family to an hour and get back to work as soon as possible. Your child may also need your assistance with a school project.
You may decide to work less and spend more time with your child during this time. There are no hard and fast rules or schedules.
All you have to do is keep your cool and remember that these are exceptions to the rule. For the most part, it’s ideal to stick to a set routine with little variation.
This is yet another delicate subject. You are unlikely to have employees if you work from home.
However, if you operate a business and are extremely close with your employees (going out for drinks with them after work), they may lose respect for you, and it will be difficult to set boundaries with them.
This is an example of spillover that has an impact on your work productivity. With your staff, you must draw boundaries.
This spillage can be frustrating and distracting if you work from home but can’t get your kids to be quiet while you’re working or if your spouse keeps nagging you to perform chores.
You may rent a modest office to work from during these hours. Working from home isn’t going to suffice. You require your personal space as well as a distraction-free workplace.
To summarise, whether you work from home or have a day job, spillover is nearly hard to avoid. The most you can do is try to keep the spillover to a minimum and discover strategies to lessen it if it becomes too much. It is possible.
Whatever you want in life will require discipline to achieve and maintaining a healthy work life balance is a small part of that. And if you want to know more about harnessing the power of self-discipline, then check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 🙂
