If you work from home, time management may be a problem. Yes, working from home has its benefits and there are many, but distractions are easy to come by.

So, how do you avoid distractions and increase your earning potential when working from home?

5 Tips for Better Time Management

1. Work the Same Hours Everyday

Whether you work from home part-time or full-time, having a set work schedule is advised. When your hours vary, you may find it harder to work.

It is also advised that you work during the hours you perform the best. In fact, that is one of the many freedoms of working from home; you can typically set your own hours.

Do you perform better working during the day or at night? To improve your productivity, choose work hours that work best for you.

2. Work Around Your Schedule

If you work full-time, you may spend all day or all night in front of the computer. This may not give you much flexibility. However, if you work part-time from home you have the freedom to set your own hours, as there are less hours to dictate.

When choosing which hours to work, it is important to look at your daily activities. Do you have a morning exercise routine? Or, do you take your children to school each day?

Instead of working for two hours, stopping, and starting again, arrange your schedule so that you can work continuously. This will result in less distractions, more efficient work, and better productivity

3. Do Not Answer the Phone

A problem with working from home is that it is a concept that not everyone understands.

For example, you may have friends or family who actually assume you are home watching television all day. Yes, we know you aren’t, but these individuals often do not know better. This may result in multiple phone calls to your home during work hours.

So, what do you do? Avoid answering the phone. If you are a parent, this may be difficult. For that reason, rely on the use of caller ID and an answering machine. This allows you to be alerted in the event of an emergency.

As for why you should avoid answering the phone, you would not talk on the phone all day when working outside of the home, so don’t do it when working inside.

4. Avoid Distractions

Before you can successfully avoid distractions, you need to determine what distracts you. Unfortunately, distractions are common when working from home.

While working at your computer, you may glance over to a sink full of dirty dishes. Instead of stopping what you are doing, create a schedule. Set aside a daily block of time, such as one or two hours to complete house work.

In keeping with distractions, you will find the internet to be a huge one. Since you work from your computer, it is easy to go from using the internet as a research tool to communication with friends.

If your weakness is checking your email multiple times a day, reading the news, or visiting online message boards to socialize, stay away from these websites.

Of you want to take extreme measures you can temporally block them from your computer.

5. Remember Your Ability to Work Depends on Your Income

If you work from home, the time and energy you put into work will depend on your income. This is one of the benefits and pitfalls to working from home. The more work you complete, the more income you will generate.

However, if you find yourself easily distracted, not only will you fall behind, but you may lose money.

Simply remembering that time is money can serve as a much needed source of motivation.

In short, working from home is beneficial, but it is not an easy task. To increase your income level, improve your time management skills. This is easy to do with simple tools, such as an alarm clock, schedule or to-list.

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