7 Best Home Based Business Productivity Hacks
Feeling like your home business is falling short of what you know it could be? You’re not alone. So many of us struggle with feeling overwhelmed, finding ourselves procrastinating more than we’d like and yearning for the productivity boost to reach our goals!
But don’t fret – there’s an easy way forward! In this blog post I’ll show you the best tips and tricks so YOU can become an unstoppable powerhouse in your own home based biz – from powering through distractions to harnessing razor focus. And I’ve got 17 years experience as proof. Get ready for success…it starts now!
1: Establish a Routine
Working from home can be quite a challenge. In order to become successful in home business, establishing a consistent daily routine is not only beneficial but essential. With the lack of structure that comes with home working, it is easy to forgo productivity and focus.
My own productivity skyrocketed when I started organizing my days into work blocks where I am essentially on the clock, doing specific tasks during the same hours every day.
Establishing a consistent routine will allow you to set clear goals for each day, leaving little spare time or room to procrastinate. Additionally, separating home life and work life allows you to remove distractions and stay focused on what needs to be achieved each day.
Those who build an effective home working routine are usually more effective and productive compared to those without fail to establish one. If you have ventured into home business (or any other out-of-office job), creating a daily routine should be a top priority.
2: Create a Dedicated Workspace
There’s nothing quite like the struggle of working from home and trying to separate home life from work life. Unfortunately, you can’t half-heartedly try to be motivated; you need a dedicated workspace that enables you to concentrate totally on work tasks when needed.
A clean, dedicated workspace helps create a mental separation between your home and your home business, allowing you to focus better on what needs to get done instead of letting home distractions distract you.
There is a lot of research on habit formation that shows how context becomes a cue for our habits. A significant amount of your behavior results from involuntary habits. This includes productivity killers like procrastination. By designing a workspace solely for productivity, you can ensure that your focus stays on the job at hand instead of any potential frustrations or diversions.
So when it comes to getting down to business in a home business, make sure you give yourself the environment that allows success.
3: Set Boundaries
Working from home can be a great perk to many home business owners, as it allows for increased flexibility in terms of hours and environment. However, this comes with the challenge of having to set boundaries.
Without setting boundaries, productivity can fall by the wayside, as home life activities may interfere with work tasks that need completing. Establishing clear limits regarding when work obligations come first makes it easier to stick to them.
Make sure your family and friends respect your routine and work space. Calls or interruptions during these times should be treated as if they were interruptions of a business meeting with an important CEO. Because that is exactly what they are.
The hours you spend working within the context of your routine are sacred. They are commitments you have made to yourself and your business. Interruptions during these hours will steal your time and money, and kill your business. Recognize that these interruptions are enemies to your success, and treat them accordingly.
4: Stay Connected
Running a home based business can sometimes make us feel isolated and disconnected. But it’s important to remember that technology can be our best friend when it comes to staying connected with other people.
Whether you’re using Zoom, Skype, or even email, staying in touch is essential for your home business. After all, even the most brilliant entrepreneurs need a bit of help every now and then – and not just from their laptops or smartphones!
Look for mastermind groups where you can have consistent meetings with other home based entrepreneurs. In his classic, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill asserts that nobody finds success without such a group. The power of multiple minds working harmoniously towards a goal is much stronger than one mind alone. So join a group of entrepreneurs who are committed to each other’s success.
5: Use the Pomodoro Technique
For home business owners, the Pomodoro Technique is a godsend! This easy-to-implement work/break schedule harnesses the power of time boxing – working for a timed interval and taking a 5 minute break – to keep productivity levels at an all-time high.
I keep a timer clock right on my desk, and use 45-minute intervals. The original method called for 25-minutes at a time, followed by a 5-minute break. I find 45 minutes to be best, but you can experiment to see what works best for you.
I generally do not take a full 5-minute break, but I do stand up and combine the Pomodoro technique with the next hack to achieve superior productivity.
6: Try Flow Journaling
Have you ever had one of those days where it feels like time flies and you get lost in what you’re doing? That’s the feeling of being in a “flow state”! For those home business owners looking to boost their productivity, tap into flow states and you’ll be cruising along in no time.
By tracking our flow states, we can begin to discover which work activities are most rewarding to us. Over time we can outsource the things that produce low flow states, and continue doing things that produce high flow states. When we move in the direction of flow states, we enter a virtuous feedback loop where we are increasing skill while experiencing effortless productivity.
A strange phenomena you will notice when you track flow states is that procrastination is irrational.
We assume we procrastinate to avoid the things we don’t like. But we often procrastinate on activities that we actually do like! Procrastination is based on fear, and we often procrastinate on fun, creative work because of the fear of uncertainty.
I combine the tracking of flow states with interstitial journaling.
This is a type of journaling where you write down what you have been working on, and what you are intending to do next . Interstitial journaling is an awesome productivity hack for increasing focus and fighting procrastination.
Interstitial journaling works perfectly with the Pomodoro technique.
But by tracking flow states as well, we can develop a rational understanding of how our productivity and focus peaks and wanes over the day and through what activities. To make this whole process easy, I built flow journaling into my app, the MindWire app.
7: Build Goals into A System
Goals are deeply misunderstood. Too often people set goals for the future, put them in a drawer, and then consider themselves a failure when the goal is not achieved.
Instead of thinking of goals as a sign of failure or success, start to see them as part of a system. As Bruce Lee said, “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
The key to building goals into a system is to use them consistently as a means of programming your subconscious mind.
The mind is like a garden, and thoughts are like seeds. There is a feedback loop between the thoughts that capture our attention, and our future thoughts. If we plant the seeds with intention, we can harvest riches. But if we neglect the garden, it will be overrun with weeds (distractions.)
Understand that your goals serve little purpose unless they are consistently imprinted onto your subconscious mind.
In 2022, Caleb Williams, a football quarterback, won the Heisman trophy. During the ceremony they showed how he uses goals. He has very ambitious goals, and has them programmed into his phone. The addictive nature of his phone – something he checks incessantly throughout the day – is constantly reseeding his subconscious mind with his goals.
Build a system to keep your goals consistently at the top of your mind, and impress them onto your subconscious multiple times per day. This will change the nature of your future thoughts, build desire and faith, and give you the seemingly supernatural insights and ideas that are the hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs.
Conclusion
So there you have it. These seven productivity tips have been learned the hard way through years of trial and error. Follow these simple rules and you will be on your way to a more productive, fun, and successful home based business.
Bio:
Benton Maples is an entrepreneur and software developer. He is the creator of MindWire, which uses additive technology to help people realize their destiny. Benton blogs about entrepreneurship at bentonmaples.com.
