How to Unbalance Your Life so You Can Work From Home Without Pulling Your Hair Out
Posted in Time Management, Work at Home
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By Ashley Arn
If you work from home (or are thinking about it), you probably have millions of ideas about what you “should do”. I can vividly remember the first day I worked from home. I felt an intense excitement and nervousness at the same time. I dove right into my work, even though I didn’t really know what that was yet.
I began reading articles about marketing, branding, and customer outreach. I started to look into setting up my Twitter Profile and my Facebook Page. I was a mad woman on a mission. All of a sudden it was 6:30 pm and it was time to quit working and spend time with my family. I suddenly felt demoralized and overwhelmed with guilt, because I realized that although I had been busy all day, I hadn’t really accomplished anything productive.
Do You Want to Have it All?
You are a woman and you want to have it all. You want a successful career and family life. (I get it I’m right there with you). If you are anything like me you don’t want to settle in the important areas of your life. Notice I said important areas of your life! I believe you can’t have it all. Yes I said it, I’m a woman and I don’t believe that we can have it all. I don’t believe that any man or woman can have it all. In my experience, when you try to have it all, you end up sucking at most things and feel stressed out. When you try to do and be everything you actually take away from your ability to excel in the important areas of your life.
Your Attention Glass:
Each day we start with a limited amount of attention available to us. Your attention is not unlimited and is actually used up very quickly. When you work from home, it is important to keep track of your attention and use it effectively. Imagine you have an attention glass that is full each morning when you wake up. If you stayed up late or went out drinking the night before, your attention glass will already be half empty.
Everything you do throughout your day drains your attention glass. Most of us drain our attention on things that are unimportant and have very little left for the things we really care about. Your attention glass doesn’t care if what you’re doing is important or not. If you spend two hours mindlessly surfing the web, you have drained your attention glass. That attention is gone and cannot be spent on your lover, family or important work tasks.
How to Unbalance Your Life:
I’m a therapist who specializes in helping professional women with dating and relationships. Some days I see clients in my office and some days I work from home. I’m actually writing this article while sitting on my couch surrounded by my two cats Sassy and Buzi. I’m simultaneously amused and annoyed by them vying for my attention by rubbing up against my laptop.
I’ve had more days than I can count working from home where I felt “very busy”, but didn’t see many results by the end of the day. I’m going to suggest something counterintuitive and wild, that you unbalance your life and work so that you can have everything that’s important to you. I know it sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Most experts demand you have balance in your life and that’s what most people try to do. You are not most people. You are a woman who wants to successfully work from home. Women who are successful and fulfilled in a couple of important areas actually live unbalanced lives. Unbalancing your life allows you to put the majority of your attention on the things that matter to you, so you can absolutely dominate in a few important areas in your life.
4 Simple Steps to Unbalance Your Life Step:
Step 1: Consciously decide your ideal final destination = Discovering the few things that deeply matter to you about working from home.
- What specifically do you want to achieve in working from home?
- What kind of people do you want to work with?
- What kind of person do you want to be as a woman working from home?
- What experiences do you want to have?
- What excites you about working from home?
- What are the few things you care about most in working from home?
Create a very specific and compelling final destination by answering these and similar questions about working from home and also about your personal relationships.
Step 2: Track what drains your attention glass each day. For a couple of days, track how you spend your time and attention. Are you spending hours mindlessly surfing the web or chatting on Facebook? I discovered one of my biggest attention wasters was reading information on the web. Yes it was helpful, but it also led to much less output or actually doing something productive on my part. These activities aren’t good or bad, but remember draining your attention glass on one activity means less available attention for others.
Step 3: Create a not to do list - what you don’t do determines what you can do. After you’ve tracked how you use your attention and time, put any activity that isn’t important to you on your not to do list. For each activity that you’ve tracked ask yourself “will this move me closer to my meaningful goals? Do I truly love or enjoy doing this?” If you answered no to both questions, put the activity on your not to do list.
Step 4: Unbalance how you use your attention glass each day Personal finance experts often teach people to pay themselves first to make saving money an automatic, easy habit. I recommend doing the same thing with your attention glass. Pay an overwhelming majority of your attention to the actions and people contributing directly to your final destination first. That way you’ll always be taking care of what is important to you. Each day you wake up, spend a majority of your attention on your meaningful goals. Anything that doesn’t directly or indirectly contribute to those goals, you want to most likely avoid or say “no” to.
Key Points:
- Track all the things that drain your attention glass each day.
- Decide on the few things that deeply matter to you.
- Create a Not to do list.
- Unbalance how you use your attention glass each day, skewing it toward what’s important to you.
- Pay an overwhelming majority of your attention to the actions and people contributing directly to your final destination first.
- Avoid or say “no” to people and activities that take away from your final destination as much as possible.
This is a guest post from Ashley Arn, the founder of http://crucialhabits.com Ashley is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who teaches professional women Crucial Habits for Dating and Relationship Success. Read her Free Relationship Advice and Tips.
This gives you clear cut ideas about what you need to look at while working at home. Your goals are important. It is hard to do everything. The older I get the more I realize I cannot be superwoman. When I was younger I sure wanted to be now I set limits.
I totally agree Annie, you need to set limits and decide what’s most important to you. Thanks for your comment.
Great article! Renee Trudeau, author of “The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal” defines balance as “having enough time, energy and resources to do the things you want to do”. So, I like your idea of “unbalancing” because nothing is ever perfectly balanced, but if we are spending time doing the things we like to do w/the people we want to be with, then I say that’s a pretty balanced life!
Hi Sara, Thanks for stopping by. I love Renee and her definition of balance. Right now I’m reading Hollee & Becky’s book, Good Enough is the New Perfect – great concept too.
You can learn more here: http://www.theworkathomewoman.com/interview-with-becky-beaupre-gillespie-and-hollee-schwartz-temple-authors-of-good-enough-is-the-new-perfect-finding-happiness-and-success-in-modern-motherhood/
[...] Tracking and utilizing your Attention Glass is a crucial habit that can completely change how you spend your time both professionally and personally. Here is a guest post I did for The Work at Home Woman, a website dedicated to helping women and moms fulfill their dreams of working at home and/or becoming self employed, while providing inspiration, motivation and support. Go to The Work at Home Woman [...]