The Home Based Business Challenge - Balancing Your Time
A Home Business Article Contributed by Fiona Mclaren
How to Balance Your Time When Running a Home Based Business
Running a home based business is a difficult, time consuming, and rewarding venture. Unfortunately, a lot of home based business owners blur the line between work time and home time. Because home based business owners are so passionate about what they do, they can sometimes forget to make the distinction between working hard and becoming obsessed. It is important that if you run a home based business that you clearly differentiate the time you spend on your business from the time you spend with your family, friends and loved ones.
Many home based business owners lack the guidelines that regular companies adhere to. If you work in the normal nine to five grind, you know that your business work stops dead on five o'clock. Home based business owners have the tendency to not set finishing times. Neither do they commit themselves to a definite start time. If you are running a home based business, do yourself a favor and make sure you have a structure to work around. Otherwise, you could spend all day sitting in front of your computer, and you would never leave the office in your home.
Separate Your Home Based Business from Your Living Space
It is important that you make sure your home based business is conducted in a separate part of the house from where you spend time with your family or friends. Make sure that all of your business paperwork is kept firmly inside your office, and don't be tempted to bring it into your living space for some extra revisions.
Your home should be a place where you can relax, wind down, and ease away the stresses of the working day. Your home based office is where you carry out your work. It is vital that you don't mix the two.
Remember to create specific working hours. You should know exactly when you start work, and when you finish too.
Differentiate Home Based Business Communication from Personal Communications
Don't let work phone calls or emails bombard you once you leave your home based office for the day. Make sure that any work calls are diverted to a separate phone that has been switched to answering machine. If you don't have a dedicated business phone in your home based office, then make sure you set up a separate ring tone for any work calls that may come through. And then don't answer the phone when your business ring comes on! This may prove very difficult, but your contacts need to know that your business operates within set perimeters.
You may also want to set up a post box for all your business mail. The last thing you want to be doing is reading over work documents over a bowl of cornflakes!
Running your home based business requires good balance. If you can switch off from your business at times, it means that you will be fresh, inspired and raring to go the next day. Don't run yourself down by always working.
