The holidays are a busy time of year. Shopping, wrapping, cooking, traveling, cleaning…all these take time in an already busy life. Sometimes there’s so much that something has to give and too often its work-at-home tasks. The problem with taking a break from your work-at-home goal is that it puts you further behind and you lose important momentum.
I equate trying to work at home with pushing a parked car. Both take a great deal of effort at the start. It can take a long time to see even the tiniest results. But once the car starts moving, it takes less effort to keep it going. As long as you keep applying pressure the car will continue to move forward. But if you stop pushing, the car will roll to a stop. To get it going again requires going back to the beginning, exerting all that extra effort, whereas a little continued pressure would have kept it coasting.
The same is true for your work-at-home goal. As long as you do something everyday, even if it’s a little thing or takes only 15 minutes, you’ll continue to move toward your goal and maintain momentum. But if you stop, it will take more effort to get started again once the holidays are over. Here are my tips to keep your goal alive during the busy holiday season:
1) Take advantage of the season. If you can tie your work-at-home venture into the holidays, you can make money and move toward your goal. Now is great time to sell on eBay or Etsy. Or you can offer gift certificates for your products or services. If you’re looking for a job, many companies are hiring seasonal workers for the holidays especially in customer service.
2) Make a list of tasks that need to be done to reach your goal and then schedule them in your calendar. For example, if you want to be a blogger you need to buy a domain name, get hosting, install the blog script, create the design of your site, and add content. That’s a lot of stuff to do at one time, but in ten minutes you can buy a domain today, hosting tomorrow, and install the blog the next day. Choosing a theme and organizing your site can take 30 minutes to an hour the following day. Writing blog posts can be done in less than an hour or shorter than that if you modify private label right materials. Taking 30 minutes or less a day, you can have a blog up and running within a week.
3) Give up something else. I’m not sure why people put their work-at-home dreams so low on the totem pole. But if you have to give up something to get more time for holiday events, why not give up TV or 30 minutes of sleep or leisure reading or a hobby. While these activities are fun, they don’t move you toward your goal, so why not sacrifice one of them for the next few weeks?
4) New Year’s Resolutions are rarely kept. Many people think they’ll put off their goal until the New Year when resolutions are made. But the reality is, New Year’s goals are rarely kept. Many never make it to February. Putting off your work-at-home tasks until New Year’s only slows you down and puts you behind.
If you’re serious about wanting to work-at-home, don’t let the holidays derail your efforts. Find time everyday to do at least one thing that will move you toward your goal.
