I have a hard time with this sometimes because I travel so much. I'm in Canada with the kids right now. I'll get home on Thursday or Friday and then Saturday I leave for the SES conference in NY. I also travel every other weekend for the most part and go to other conferences once every 6 weeks or so. Keeping motivated is sometimes an extremely hard task. I have found a few things that work though...
1. As someone else mentioned, I have a webpage on my hard drive with all my most important links so that I can easily check what I need to from one stop each morning.
2. A running todo list. The list is never empty - I add stuff to it daily and complete stuff on it daily.
3. As someone else said, knowing my productive times. I'm most productive during the day while my son is napping and at night. So, I try to do household stuff and the mom thing when I know I wouldn't be getting much done anyway.
4. Closing out programs I know are distracting. If I have to get something done, then programs that distract me (say IRC) get shut down until the task is done.
5. A mother's helper. My cousins girlfriend acts as a mothers helper to me at times (for example, she is with me in Canada right now). I pay her to come over and play with the kids and clean up a bit - the money I pay her is made up for by the fact that I am able to get much more work done and therefore make a much more in a day than I pay her to be there in a day.
6. Having friends who kick me in the ass. My boyfriend is in the industry - and my best friends are too. If they see me getting distracted or unmotivated, they give me a quick pep talk, or sometimes a "get the hell to work!" that can kick me back into gear again.
7. Keeping a list of what I want as rewards for a job well done. Sometimes referred to as a dream board. When I need to remember why I work (aside from the whole feeding everyone and having somewhere to live LOL), I take a look at it and am quickly reminded.
8. Keeping goals of where I want my business to be in six months, a year and further down the line. These can sometimes help me remain on track so that I can achieve what I want in the timeframe I want.
Just some of the stuff that works for me. Of course, my biggest wish is to find more time to be able to read. I have a mountain of books I'd like to get to that have been sitting here at least six months or more. Worst part? I keep buying more
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