I have a confession to make… Working from home has taken a bit of a toll on my health.
When thinking of working from home, many think, “Oh, it’s easy” and “I can work all day in my pajamas if I wish”, or “My day is so flexible, I can do what I want, when I want.”
Though the above may be true at times, running a business from home, VA or otherwise, is not as easy as it sounds and can take a toll on your home and health if you let it.
In what I have been going through personally, I can tell you that it is very difficult to balance work, home, health and family time (and I don’t even have kids yet). With my original mentality on how nice it would be to “roll out of bed and start working”, it has taken great effort to stay focused and on task with my business, while keeping the rest of my life together.
In the beginning, I had the luxury (yes I say luxury) of not being very busy and not having many clients. I had a lot of flexible time, but the money wasn’t coming in. The first year of business was very hard and money was tight, but I was determined to go on and make my business a success. **As an aside here, I must thank my husband for his support and extreme patience, because without it, it would have made those montiarily tight months even more difficult**
After stepping up my marketing efforts (and a bit of luck) I had grown my business tremendously in it’s 2nd year and I had gotten to the point of where I could not physically handle all the client work that was coming my way plus the business development without working all hours. I was frazzled in my business, my laundry was piling up, my husband was wondering when he would get to see his wife, and I was putting on more weight.
Late 2007 I transitioned my business from a sole VA practice to the multi-VA model, and started assembling a team to help me. It did help alleviate some of my problems for a time, but not all. And since I started delegating more client work to my team, I somehow decided to add more and more to my plate again. I could not shake the feeling that my business was running me, instead of me running my business. I was on the verge of throwing in the towel and walking away.
So recently, I’ve decided to take the reins of my life and my health and make ME a priority. I’ve joined a gym, and joined Weight Watchers and am adopting a healthier way of eating and living. I have shortened my office hours that before had extended way beyond what they should, closing up shop to go to the gym, and focusing on spending time with my husband and doing things that are NOT work related. I’ve also added some additional ME time to my day with 5-10 minutes to reflect and write my thoughts on the day and my points of gratitude. And I have adopted versions of “law of attraction” principals and am putting to work the power of positive thinking. Already in this short few weeks, I am seeing some improvement, a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I am enjoying my life again. I’m not perfect, but small steps are making a difference.
So how does one not get into this small business/work at home trap? Here are some points one must consider with working from home or running a “soloprenuer” business from the get go.
- -Make yourself and your family priority number one. Without your family, you will have no support to fall back on. Without your health… well it can make it really difficult to do anything.
- -Eat Right! All the time! Working from home makes it so easy to walk to the the fridge or pantry to grab whatever you can stuff you face with. Throw out the junk and keep healthy whole foods, fruits and vegetable on had for easy snacking.
- -Make your office hours reasonable, and stick to them! That extra reply to the email can wait until morning. It’s not life or death.
- -Get out and away from your desk/business and do something active for 3o minutes. Whether it’s a walk, a trip to the gym, or house cleaning. Do something!
- -Remove negative thoughts from your mind. Take out the “I can’t” “I’m not” “I’ll never” from your vocabulary and focus on want you CAN and WANT to do and what you WANT your life to look like.
The above things are what I got started with and have make the world of difference in my life so far. I’m not perfect at it yet, but I’m setting myself up to make some healthier habits which in turn will help me have a happier life.