Home Office Organization–21st Century Style

Quit Goofing Off and Get Back to Work!

Working at home has some unique challenges. It’s easy to get distracted. What steals your time? What keeps your productivity from being as high as you know it should be? We all have time-stealers in our lives that keep us busy but don’t actually accomplish anything worthwhile.

My Problem

For me, it’s email. I sit down with my coffee first thing in the morning just to see what’s there and if there is anything important that will require my immediate attention.

But instead of just reviewing what’s there, I start reading all kinds of stuff that should wait until later. I do things like read blog posts, newsletters, tons of junk mail from sales lists I really should unsubscribe from, and generally waste time. I also feel a strange obligation to read things that don’t have anything to do with my work or even my life just because they show up in my inbox.

Why do I do this to myself?

I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve come up with the notion that I like it when my email boxes are empty. I feel like I’m in more control of my life. I handle postal mail the same way, but there is so much less of it.

This is a really bad habit, especially when I’ve been offline for an extended period of time, like I have been because of Hurricane Gustav. We lost power for 9 days, and I just got internet access back at home on September 27. I haven’t dealt with email for a full month because internet access was so sparse. When we needed to get on the web we went to one of our hot spots: Community Coffee House or Chick-Fil-A. I need to focus on business and getting my income back up to normal, but I have hundreds of email messages in each of two inboxes and I’m seriously tempted to hide out until they’re all read and filed or deleted.

I was also reminded there are a lot of things to do off the computer and away from the TV. We had power for nearly 3 weeks but no TV and no regular internet access. We stayed busy getting a lot done around the house that really needed our attention. We still have a lot to do. In that period of time I realized we got a lot accomplished. Accomplished. Done.

Then I realized how much I’m not accomplishing online because of my email habits.

What am I going to do about it?

Here is a task list I came up with while we had no internet or TV. I already do some of it in this order anyway. I just have to be much more disciplined about my first email check of the day.

• Start some quick offline task before making coffee in the morning, like laundry
• Make breakfast while the coffee is brewing, and then eat
• Continue the offline task if needed
• Write a blog post, market a blog, or start on a new niche website while finishing my coffee (limited to one hour)
• Work with my son on his homeschooling assignments
• Errands
• Check email and scan for client and work messages, and important personal messages only
• Ignore the rest of the messages
• Plan the online work for the day
• Lunch
• Yard or other outside work or take a walk or bike ride
• Get back to work and stick to the plan for the day
• Take a break and start supper
• Get back on the computer and finish my work for the day
• Go to my second job on days that I have tutoring students
• Supper
• Optional: continue working online

At this point I’ll allow myself to get into my email boxes and peruse them for as long as I want. In that time I’ll be unsubscribing from as much as I can without interfering with my business or true interests.

I started this schedule when I got internet access back. I know it’s doable because when we went to a hot spot, I didn’t spend a ton of time on email. I scanned for important messages, took care of them, and then went to other parts of the web for news, to write a blog post, to watch the first Presidential debate on September 26, and to see what was up in the connected world.

This experience was an epiphany and I realized I must do all my online work in this fashion, not just during emergencies when we have limited internet access.

What do you do that steals your time? Please leave your stories in the comments.

Sherri Joubert
Trying to be more productive

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