How I Keep My Work At Home Life Organized, part 1

I’ve run my Internet marketing consulting firm from a home office for the past 10 years. Making sure I don’t spend my days in bunny slippers is a huge challenge. It is soooo easy to fritter away a day if you don't stick to a routine. Here’s what I do:

The dog runs the show
Even though I am a night person, every day, come hell or high water, I get up at 7 a.m. and take Benny Bix Ochman Labradoodle to the park where he runs with his buddies, and I socialize with their owners, for an hour. We walk three miles round trip, quickly, so we both get some exercise.

Going to the park means I have to get up, get dressed, and appear life-like early in the morning.

Email is the enemy

In the hour after we get back I feed him and me, straighten up the house, throw out newspapers from the previous day and magazines from the previous week (read or not, they can’t hang around my tiny apartment). I have breakfast, read three newspapers, wash the dishes.

If I check email as soon as I get back from the park, my routine is shot. I’ll still be in my dog walking clothes at 3 in the afternoon, Benny Bix and I won’t have had any food, I'll be running on coffee, and my brain will be on overdrive the entire day.

The crucial element
Now comes the critical step. I take a shower, blow dry my hair, put on make-up and get dressed.

I don't wear business clothes unless I have to go to a meeting. I wear jeans, but getting dressed puts me in the right frame of mind for working. Otherwise, it's easy to put things off - like going out to do errands.

It might seem silly to have to go all this just to sit at the computer all day, but I need my routine to get and stay organized for the day.

How do you get your day going?

(Cross-posted from stacksandstacks.com Clutter Control Freak)

I've just started working from my home also about two months ago. You are right when you say that email is evil. I've developed a habit of checking my inbox every 15 minutes. What a waste of time. I was reading somewhere that you should designate about two/three times a day to check your email and immediately after to handle all work related to those emails. If you continuously check them you will just slow down your productivity... or rather work longer instead of smarter.

I agree that e-meil is an enemy in some circumstances, but not all the time.

Thanks for yet another useful post. It sounds a bit like speed dating for smallbusinesses.

I must say that now that I have a kid in high school who needs to be on the bus at 7am I am forced to get up and out of bed by 6. This has been good for me. The hard part is staying focused on the rest of the kids and getting them off to school before I go sit down to check e-mail because if I check just one then I loose all focus of everything else and lunches don't get made and my youngest will be late for pre-school. Coffee always helps though.

Among other things, we teach companies how to telecommute, so naturally, we do the same thing ourselves. I agree wholeheartedly with your attitude. Showing up at your "office" dressed has a profound effect upon your attitude.

Another thing you absolutely MUST do, is to train your spouse and children that your are "at the office" during business hours and shouldn't be interrupted if it can wait until lunch hour or when you "get home".

This is some really great advice and for all of us bloggers it needs to be taken to heart.

I do agree that dress code is a must in home office in spite of arguing that no one is there to check that out. Reading e-mails ,may be a few minutes to check out any new message regarding your business.Dogs, sorry mate i don't have a say about that. Home Business is pretty fun as long as the business does not crash.