How to Stay Focused While Working at Home

It helps if you like what you do

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I’ve been a full-time freelancer for almost a decade now. It was pretty scary, quitting a decent day job to take a chance on something I’d never done before, but I had a number of good reasons for my decision.

Even so, I had no guarantee that this was going to work out. I did have a bit of a financial cushion, so I wasn’t jumping entirely off the cliff; but…it pretty much had to work, and soon, or I was going to have to figure out some other way of earning a living.

Fortunately, it did work out, and I now work at home.

I love it here. But like any home, there are a jillion things to do here — tasks that need doing (like cleaning and gardening and laundry and finally finishing unpacking from our move nearly two years ago) and activities that I like doing (like reading and…well, okay, pretty much just curling up somewhere cozy and reading).

How do I stay on task and actually get my paid work done?

Be Disciplined

The first aspect of being disciplined is being organized. I keep a simple but fussy spreadsheet that encompasses all of my paid work. (My own writing — including Medium articles — just happens when it happens, I don’t keep track of that.) In my spreadsheet, I…