Here is number 4 in our series of work at home articles with Patrice Lewis. I first saw her in
Countryside, my favorite magazine, and LOVED her articles. If you want to work at home you MUST read these!
Enjoy! Tawra
If You Need a Boss to Nag You….
Don’t Quit your Day JobTime Management for the Self-Employed
by,
Patrice LewisYesterday I got up at 4 a.m. to go to work. I’m an early bird, so it’s easier for me to go to work early.
Yesterday my husband Don got up at 9:30 a.m. to go to work. He’s a night owl, so his internal clock makes it easier for him to stay up late and get up late.
We work at the same job, for the same company. It’s nice to have an employer who is so flexible…..
Flexible? What kind of company can allow its employees to be THIS flexible?
Of course, if you’ve been reading this series, you already know. We’re self-employed. We make our hardwood mugs out of our home workshop, so the farthest we have to commute is about thirty feet.
Sounds blissful, doesn’t it? No setting the alarm clock, no boss to nag you or look over your shoulder when you happen to have a game of solitaire on the computer, no one to tell you what to do or what not to do…..
Ha ha ha. Fooled you.
No, we don’t use an alarm clock. Our motivation to get out of bed depends on what time of year it is, whether it’s our busy season or our slow season, on how many orders we have due, on whether the weather is cooperating, and on a myriad of other factors.
There are times when nothing short of stark fear propels us out of bed (“Gad-zooks, we have to get that shipment out of here today….aaaaaahhhhh!”). There are other times when nothing short of hunger propels us out of bed (“Yaaawwwnn. I’m hungry, I suppose it’s time to get up….”).
Looked at in this light, it sure doesn’t seem like we have any self-discipline. And, as anyone knows, to succeed in a home business, you need to be a strong self-motivator and a self-starter.
So where does sleeping in until 9:30 a.m. come in?
It happens when you’ve stayed up until 2 a.m. the night before, getting that second coating finished.
That’s right, 2 a.m. Heavy-eyed, drooping, we know we darn well have to get that second coating on before we hit the hay or we’ll be a day behind in our production schedule.
Don, who is lucky enough to be able to sleep through minor nuclear explosions or small children (sometimes they’re the same thing) can sleep late the next morning. I, however, am unlucky enough that no matter what time I go to bed, I’m up before dawn. Besides, there are cows to milk. I’ll catch up on my sleep later.
Sometimes it helps to set aside certain times to do certain things. Or, set aside certain days to do certain things. Monday might be the day you always do the books. Tuesday afternoons might be set aside for advertising. Doing this creates a "straw boss," a shadow boss.
The schedule becomes your boss. For example, I do a quarterly magazine for the Purebred Dexter Cattle Association (www.purebreddextercattle.org). I set myself a deadline of, say, February 15 to get the publication out the door to the printers. I lose sleep as that deadline approaches, getting up at unholy hours to work on the document, and I kick myself if I miss the due date by a day or two. Being a day or two late doesn't matter to the PDCA, but it matters to ME. That deadline is my boss.
Time management is essential in a home business. It’s too easy to fritter away your daylight hours doing little chores around the house or farm. However, there are a number of easy ways to keep yourself on track.
To help keep your timing in place, you might want to purchase three or four of those little kitchen timers, the kind that stick to the refrigerator with a magnet. You can clip one to your collar and carry it with you. You can leave one in the shop or barn. That way you can set the timer to remind you to do things. We set the timer to remind us to feed the dogs at noon, but also to remind us to call the customer at three. Or it reminds us the glue is dry and we can move to the next step. Or it reminds us that it’s time to apply a second coat of varnish.
If you decide to sit down and read a book, that's fine; but look at the clock and give yourself a limit, such a half hour. We have five clocks in the house and one in the shop. There's practically no place we can be without knowing what time it is. We do that on purpose.
If you live on a farm or homestead, you have to schedule your homestead chores along with your paying job. The hay has to get in before it rains, but if we have a shipment due to go out via FedEx tomorrow, we have to juggle our time to get both jobs done – or decide which job can be postponed (usually the hay). A fun variation on this theme is to be working frantically on a time-sensitive project, then glance out the window to see the cows strolling down the driveway. Well, shoot. Schedule change.
Schedule yourself to allow for ALL the work to get done, not just the business or not just the farm. I get up at 4 a.m. to write before I milk the cows. For my peace of mind the writing can't wait; for the cows' comfort the milking can't wait. When I come in from the barn, the kids are up, then there are meals to prepare, schoolwork to do, music lessons, household chores, and - oh yeah - our business to work on.
Remember that if the home business is your spouse's, then you can't pull him or her away from work to put out fires (unless it's literally, of course). Pretend they're "at the office" and unreachable unless there's an emergency. And yes, the cows strolling down the driveway constitute an emergency.
As you can see, while our time may seem unstructured, in fact our days are very structured. The old hype ("Be your own boss! Set your own hours!") promises that we can set our own hours. Well, we do. And we set our own minutes, and sometimes our own seconds. There's no timeclock to punch and there's no factory whistle except the kitchen timer, but that doesn't make our schedule any less important.
A typical winter day for us might go something like this:
4 a.m.: I get up, read the internet news and drink my tea while I wake up. Answer emails, write, have my "quiet" time.
7:30 a.m.: milk the cows.
8 a.m.: back in the house. Kids get up. Get breakfast going, strain and chill the milk, maybe throw a load of laundry in.
8:30 a.m.: Don gets up. Make his coffee.
9 a.m.: Don goes to work in the shop. Tidy up the kitchen, give the house a once-over.
10 a.m.: Spread out the schoolbooks, get the kids going on their studies.
12 p.m.: Schoolwork is over, lunch. Fold the laundry, maybe throw a batch of bread into the bread machine. Feed the dogs, bring in a load of firewood. Don goes back to work in the shop.
1 p.m.: If we need to run into town, the girls and I do so in the early afternoon. Library, post office, hardware store. Drop the kids at a friend's house to play. Get the mail on the way home.
3 p.m.: Clean the barn, get fresh hay, water, grain. Don joins me to fix some fences, or repair a gate, or shove another 700-pound round bale in the pasture for the livestock, or other farm chores.
5 p.m.: Pick up the kids. Dinner. Dishes.
6:30 p.m.: Put the cows in the barn for the night. Don is done in the shop, and we set up to do some indoor work on the business, usually gluing on handles or bottoms, or gluing the bodies of the tankards together, or packing a box for shipment. Kids do their chores in the house.
8 p.m.: Get the kids ready for bed.
8:30 p.m.: Back at work. Work until 10 p.m.
10 p.m. I go to bed. Don works at the computer for his "quiet" time, either on work-related stuff or just relaxing.
1:30 a.m.: Don comes to bed.
It's a weird, wacky schedule, but it works for us. Obviously the schedule varies according to what needs to be done, and according to season, but it's still structured enough that we (usually) get everything done. The nice thing is that as a family, we can work together all the time. We are unusually close as a result.
If you can manage your time without a boss looking over your shoulder, then your chances of succeeding in a home business have just improved. If not, don’t quit your day job. Yet.
Fortunately, self-motivating can be a learned thing. When Don and I both worked at conventional jobs outside the home, we got up at the same time and we went to bed at the same time. It wasn’t so hard for me – as I said, I’m an early bird – but anyone who is a night owl by nature will understand how much harder it was for Don to get up at 6:30 in the morning in order to hit the commute by 7:15.
Now we can exploit our internal clocks to their full advantage. Since Don and I work together 24/7, and since we homeschool, we’ve discovered that it’s important that we each have our “quiet time” to decompress. That means no spouse and no kids around. Don’s solution is to come to bed around 1:30 a.m. and get up around 9 a.m. My solution is to get up at 4 a.m. and go to bed when the kids do (unless there is some evening work to get done). Works beautifully.
Our “down time” is often not technically “down.” Don might do some improvements on the webpage, or catch up on his emails, or other computer-related work. He’s the site manager for an enormous yearly craft fair in Oregon, so he often works on aspects of that. Or, sometimes he’ll just surf the web and zone. Sometimes he’ll plug a DVD into his computer and watch a movie using headphones.
My down time is spent catching up on the news via the internet, answering email, and then writing. Mornings are when I’m most creative, so if I’m going to write, it’s going to be early. Once the kids are awake, concentration is gone.
Notice that nowhere do I mention television as an option for down time. That’s because, thankfully, we don’t get television reception and haven’t for the past thirteen years. Television viewing, so far as I can tell, is a complete and total waste of time, and frankly we don’t want to waste the little free time we have to ourselves.
Down time is less of an option when we have rush orders to get out. That’s when we’ll work until 2 a.m. There have been times when we’ve literally pulled all-nighters between us, when Don will work until 2 a.m. and then wake me up and I’ll take over. We plan our weird-hour stuff so that we’re not in the shop at these times (we don’t want to be out of ear-shot of the kids), but instead are coating, gluing, packing and boxing, or otherwise working in the house.
Hey, it’s a living.
So what makes us so disciplined? What motivates us? What gives us the ability to be self-starters?
It’s amazing how fear can supply all that. Fear that we won’t get an order to a customer on time (most of our business is wholesale, so customers need their order in time do go to a show). Fear that, if a customer is unhappy, they won’t place another order in the future. Fear that unusually cold temperatures will slow our production schedule drastically, so we work like crazy before the cold snap arrives to get a production run done on time.
See how it works? When you work at a conventional nine-to-five job, you are motivated to get to work on time and do your best so that your boss is satisfied and continues to give you a paycheck.
It’s the same thing for us. We do our best and make sure our customers are satisfied so that they continue placing orders. That’s what propels us out in below-zero weather to wade through the snow to the shop and start heating it up until the temperature is tolerable (that means above freezing). That’s what keeps us awake until 2 a.m. packing a box for shipment because FedEx Ground gets here at 10 a.m. That’s what drives us to work eighteen-hour days during our busy season, to provide enough products for all our customers.
But this schedule is also what allows us to take a few weeks off in the winter because it’s snowing and heck, it’s too pretty outside to work. Instead we’ll go snowshoeing. Or sledding with the kids. Or build a snowman. Or we’ll take a day or two off here and there in the spring so we can walk to our pond and see the tadpoles. Or identify wildflowers. Or move the cows to another pasture.
But no matter how much time we take off, or at whatever odd times (Tuesdays, sunny days, blizzardy days, bad hair days….), we know that we will have the motivation to buckle down when business demands it.
Can you?
If so, get busy.
Patrice Lewis is co-founder of Don Lewis Designs.
She and her husband have been in business for fourteen years.
The Lewis’s live on forty acres in north Idaho with their two homeschooled children,
assorted livestock, and a shop which overflows into the house with depressing regularity.
