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How To Stay Motivated And Accountable When You’re Working From Home

Updated: Jun 24, 2021


Netflix is calling …


Some days it’s so tempting to sleep in, lounge on the couch, work in the yard, or binge your favorite TV show all day. That doesn't help your work from home productivity.



What do you do to stay motivated and hold yourself accountable to get stuff done?


You start by setting goals for yourself. If you don’t know what you want or need to get done today, this week, and this month, it’s easy to piddle around, get distracted, and have little to show for at the end of the day.


How you do this will depend on your job or business, but a good general process is to start with the big picture, add in some monthly and weekly milestones, and then break those down into weekly and daily tasks.


Of course the best goals do you little good without deadlines. Breaking it down into the monthly and weekly milestones is a great way to do it. Of course setting goals of what you want to get accomplished on any given day helps as well. That’s the basis of your to-do list. The most important part is to write all this down and keep it close.


You will greatly improve your chances of getting things done and staying productive when you take the time to write it all down. You should even go so far as to place them on a digital calendar - Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, or even your phone calendar, and ADD REMINDERS!


Let’s run through a hypothetical example.


Let’s say you want to write a book. Great goal! But without a deadline, it’s nothing more than a dream. So let’s improve this by deciding to write a book in the next six months. Write that down.


Next, start to think about what it will take to write that book. You have to come up with a topic, research it, outline your book, and then do the actual writing - chapter by chapter. Come up with a timeline for each of those milestones including the chapters you need to write. It may look something like this:


  • Come up with a book idea and do basic research - 5 days

  • Outline the book - 2 days

  • Write Chapter 1 - 1 week

  • Write Chapter 2 - 1 week

  • Etc

  • Edit - 2 weeks

  • Order cover graphics- 1 day

  • Format - 2 days

  • Publish - 1 day


Once you have those major milestones written down, it’s easy to see at a glance what you need to get done on any given day to make that goal.


Keep this written master plan close by. The more you look at it, the more likely you are to succeed. Use it as you make out your written daily task list.


After that, it’s just a matter of getting into the habit of plowing through that list and not stopping for the day until it’s done.


After that, you’re free to binge Netflix to your heart’s content.


 

To read more about being successful, working from home or otherwise, CLICK HERE to get my Time for Success eBook.