Archive for January 16th, 2009

Occasionally I get asked for advice on freelancer work habits and, in particular, how to work for yourself from home. Some people would like to work from home, but worry that they’ll be distracted by television, home repair projects, housework, or their kids.

The last is a legitimate fear. If you plan to (really) work from home, then you need childcare. Kid distractions are not easily quarantined into limited chunks of time. Dealing with the others, however, is a matter of two things.

First, cut yourself some slack. The average office worker spends an hour per day in meetings she does not personally deem productive. She also spends about an hour commuting (in addition to the time she spends each morning pulling on uncomfortable clothes). She surfs the Internet at work for personal reasons for about two hours per day. So right there, that’s four hours per day of largely wasted time. You could watch television for three hours during the workday at your home office and still come out ahead if you focused on work projects during the other times.

Second — and this is my personal tactic — you become downright obsessive about the goals you set for yourself. Every Sunday, I make a list of my priorities for the week. These include both work and personal priorities. If they are not all crossed off by Friday afternoon, I indulge in fits of self-loathing. Since I do not particularly enjoy that activity, this provides a good incentive to turn that to-do list into a sea of horizontal lines. I want to see those horizontal lines even if it involves some bizarre behavior.

For instance, I just got off the treadmill after — exactly — 5.5 miles. Last Sunday, I set a goal to run 15 miles this week. I had certainly covered more than 15 miles by today in a bipedal fashion. On Sunday I walked 2 miles and did 5 on the elliptical. On Monday I ran 4 miles, on Wednesday I ran 3.5 miles, on Thursday I did 2 miles on the treadmill and 3 on the elliptical. This adds up to 19.5 miles. But it does not add up to 19.5 miles of running, and my priority list says very clearly that I am to “run” 15 miles. If you add up the running components of that list, that comes out to 9.5 miles. So what did I do today? 5.5 miles of running on the treadmill, of course. Even though I am the one who wrote that verb and I very easily could have changed it.

But I guess I figured, why? Exercise is an opportunity for a “daily private victory” as Covey puts it in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. When you start admitting defeat on these smaller things, it becomes easier to admit defeat on the bigger ones, like not writing 1,000 words a day on a novel, or not sending out a certain number of pitches to magazines. When you work for yourself, particularly if you work at home, you have no other boss to whip you into shape. So you become the toughest boss you will ever face.

Really and truly. Please be my friend…