Work From Home: 3 Hurdles You Need Overcome

For anybody who is about to dabble in working from home especially when it’s freelancing, there is always a sense of euphoria about it. When you think about how you will have all the opportunity you probably assumed you have been missing to work at a full blast, bringing your entire creativity and ingenuity to play, and becoming the rave of the moment, you’ll believe that for once you’ve got it all wrapped up.

Taking a succinct look at it, why shouldn’t this be so? After all, you now have the whole 24 hours in a day to yourself and nothing will stop you from putting the whole time to work. You will definitely have this notion until you get into working from home and it will amaze you that what you will discover will be another ball game altogether.

As a freelancer, you know you can work from home at your own convenience and pace, without anybody breathing down your neck. You have all along believed it will be fun and very heartwarming, but wait a minute, what about the hurdles? You never thought they would be there? Get ready for an eye-popping and worthwhile experience. You just need to see what working from home entails.

1. The social media

You definitely never at any time thought that the social media was designed to suck people in. When doing the 8 to 5 stuff, you would occasionally find yourself engrossed in social networking but never thought so much about it. There was actually no tell tales of the time you were investing in it.

You will never believe you could get addicted to anything but you will come to realize that the report by HuffPost that Twitter and Facebook are more addictive than smoking should be taken seriously. You will come to the realization that you could spend hours just scrolling away. The most annoying aspect of the whole thing is that you will leave the bulk of your work undone.

There is that unconscious feeling that you have enough time to get back to work but at the end of the day, you will feel completely wrecked up and unable to do anything meaningful. You would go on to tell yourself that you would get back to it and do a yeoman’s job the next day only to find yourself indulging in exactly the same thing.

You cannot do without the social media especially now the world has become a global village and your freelancing work may be internet dependent. You may depend on one or more of the platforms to reach across a lot of your clients who may have accounts on any of the platforms. All you need to do is to set limits on when to access your social media accounts and this will save you from falling into an unproductive rut.

2. The TV distractions

Another source of distraction that will almost do you in, is the TV. If you have the misfortune of setting out on your working from home project when an important competition like the FIFA organized World Cup 2018 started. A lot of frenzies was built around the competition. You will remember the Salisbury poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, which prompted calls for England to boycott the games.

The fact that the atmosphere had already being charged up by the poisoning incident before the games started wouldn’t have helped matters any bit. As if that was not enough, the Wimbledon grand slam also came up at the same time and when no match was going on, you will get hooked up by the Wimbledon 2018, trying to find out how Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Rafael Nadal were getting on at the championship

The only option you have is to plan out a schedule of work. Create an office and work out a programme that stipulates how many hours you must put in and the exact time you must resume and close from the office. If for any reason you find yourself in this type of situation, you need to absolutely understand it from the onset that you are an employee who incidentally has a bit of freedom that must not be misused.

3. Invitations from friends

Your friends will start to view your time as free and invite you for virtually everything and you will not help matters if you fail to understand that the clocking out early was a big loss in productivity. There is nothing bad about going out for lunch or playing a round of golf once in a while with friends.

An afternoon in the greens is good for the health but you must decide to make sure that it’s scheduled and must not sacrifice your income in the process. There is always that momentary urge but you must discipline yourself.

For all intents and purposes, working from home is more productive than brainstorming in a noisy, people-filled office. By inculcating discipline, you will start to experience an amazing improvement in your productivity and ultimate happiness.  

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