Tips and Free Printable to Help You Plan for Work At Home Success in 2019
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, or so the saying goes. Not planning doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t reach your goals, but chances are without a plan you’ll waste time and take longer to get there. A plan helps you focus on what you want and how you’ll get it, so you don’t expend unnecessary effort on things that don’t work.
For me, planning starts by assessing how things have been going, what hasn’t been working, and then deciding on a course of action for the future.
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How to Plan for Work At Home Success in 2019
You can use the fillable printable or simply grab a piece of paper and do the following?
Out with the Old in 2018
What I Accomplished
It’s always good to acknowledge what you did achieve, even if it wasn’t a lot. If you’re looking for a work-at-home job, and you updated your resume, put that down. If you want to start an ecommerce store and you researched Fullfillment by Amazon and/or Shopify, write it down.
What I Didn’t Achieve
This is where you write down what you wanted to happen that didn’t. Try to be specific. Instead of saying, “I didn’t work at home,” write down what work-at-home goal you didn’t achieve. For example, “I didn’t find a list of 5 things I could do to work from home.” Or, “I didn’t find a work-at-home job.” Or, “I didn’t finish setting up my blog.”
What Got In My Way?
This is where you need to be brutally honest with yourself. It’s on thing to tell me or your friends you didn’t have time to achieve your goals, but it’s no good to lie to yourself. You can’t make changes to achieve your work-at-home dream if you’re going to let yourself off with your excuses. That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges that include little time, less money, etc. But me and most people I know who have achieved work-at-home success had the same challenges. Some people had even more such as a chronic illness, young children, aging parents that needed supervision, etc.
So, this is where you honestly confess what got in the way. Did you waste time binge watching Netflix when you could have been looking for a work-at-home job? Did you hit the snooze on your alarm, when you could have gotten up an hour earlier and posted something on your blog, or shared it on social media?
In with the New 2019
Now that you’ve assessed where you are, it’s time to make a change and plot a new course.
What Do I Want to Achieve?
Don’t just say you want to work from home. Get specific. What sort of work do you want to do? If you’re not sure, then jot down what you want your work-at-home goal to allow you to do. For example, “I want a work at home option that allows me to travel and work wherever I am.” Or “I want a part-time work at home job so I can stay home with the kids.”
Other specifics should include how much you need to make or other successes. For example, “I want to have a successful YouTube channel with a 1000 subscribers, that earns $1000 per month.”
By When? What date will you achieve this by. Give yourself enough time to get the work done, but not so long that you let the goal peter out.
How? (Action Steps)
List all the things you need to do to achieve your goal. This is your actual to-do list.
When Will I Make Time?
Time is the biggest factor that gets in the way of success. If you don’t schedule in your to-dos, you won’t get them done, and you’ll end 2019 the same as you end 2018. So look at your schedule, routine, activities, and calendar and figure out when you’re going to work on this goal. Decide what you’ll give up, if you have to make time. Can you not watch Netflix all evening. Maybe there are other commitments you have that you can give up. I often drop projects or freelance work that I’m not excited about anymore.
How Will I Avoid/Deal With Obstacles?
You know what they say about best laid plans. To make sure your goal doesn’t get derailed by the challenges you’ll come across, anticipate and make a plan. If you know mornings are busy in your home, and you worry your goal time will be lost helping kids get ready for school, plan for that. You can have them get their things ready the night before.
What Do I Need to Learn?
Many people’s work-at-home efforts get stalled or stuck because they’re not sure what to do. The only way to get past that is to figure out, what do you need to learn, research, or know about to move forward. Make a list and set time to learn it.
What Tools/Resources/Help Do I Need?
Similar to knowing what you need to learn, you need to know what things you need to get the work done. Do you need a PayPal account? Do you need someone to build your website? Make a list of tools and resources you’ll need to get your work-at-home goal off and running.
Once you have your worksheet filled out, you have a basic plan, not just for what you need to do, but also, on how you’ll avoid challenges and what you need to help reach your goal.
The next step is to do it. Pull out your calendar and schedule time for your to-dos.
If time is an issue, be sure to check out WAHS other free printable; How to Create the Time You Need to Achieve Your Work-At-Home Goal
What work-at-home goal do you plan to achieve in 2019? Let us know in the comments below!
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