Organizing Your Day

No matter what profession you're in, if you work from home it is imperative that you organize and prioritize every day for optimum and rewarding performance.  Here are a few hints that have helped me along the way. 

1. Start the night before: It’s a great idea to make a list of the things you need to accomplish the night before. Prioritizing your list is always a great idea, and when you wake up in the morning, you'll have a clear-cut guide detailing everything that must be done.

2. Beware of diversions: Distractions are a huge issue.  Anything from phone calls, to someone suddenly stopping by, or those sudden urges to Twit or Facebook your way into a social frenzy. Truthfully, unless you are “truly” using those networks to drive advertising, you should leave them alone during your workday.  You would be amazed at how much time is wasted away.  If you find that you constantly get off track, get a watch with a timer and set it so it goes off every 30 minutes. Every time it sounds, be sure you're working on what you originally said you would. If you're not, stop what you're doing and get back on schedule. Most distractions are not emergency situations.

3. Check it off. After finishing a project, cross it off your list.  It will give you a  sense of accomplishment, and help to keep you on track throughout the day.

4.  Schedule breaks:  There are reasons that mandatory lunch breaks and intermittent 10-15 minute breaks are a part of labor law.  Taking a lunch break and a couple of shorter breaks during the course of the day helps the mind to replenish itself.  Most of us have discovered that thinking can be tiring, even exhausting. As the primary source of energy in the human brain, glucose can be rapidly used up during mental activity, so making sure you take a couple of needed breaks is paramount.  Incidentally, research has shown that mental concentration actually drains glucose from a key part of the brain associated with memory and learning – underscoring just how crucial this blood sugar is for proper brain function.  So make sure you EAT!

5. Do a final check. At the end of the day, take a look at your list. If you were not able to finish everything, then move it to the beginning of your list for tomorrow. In the event that there were far too many things left undone, then either you got distracted and didn’t stay on track, or you had way too many things on your list to begin with, so you might want to re-think your list, and really focus on prioritizing.

REMEMBER, you only have 24 hours, and you should be using a third of those hours to sleep!