Post Your Weekly Schedule

Remember back in the day when the job you worked had a wall calendar with everyone’s hours on it? By recreating that calendar on your refrigerator door, you can let everyone in the household - including you - know your weekly work schedule.

Schedules have a nasty name because we are used to having to adhere to other people’s schedules. Putting our noses to someone else’s grindstone feels like slavery to us work-at-home types. But putting our noses to our own grindstone, while it may look the same, is actually completely different: it’s freedom. We’ve all heard that freedom isn’t free. The price of being a work-at-home mom is self-discipline. When you lack it, the earnings won’t happen and you’ll find yourself tethered again to someone’s else grindstone in no time.

Writing your schedule in your planner isn’t good enough. Post it where the whole family can see it. First, it’ll hold you accountable to the hours. Not only do I work my hours more consistently when they are posted on the fridge, I am more apt to stop working at the designated time. It’s my way of showing my family that the time I spend with them is important. When the kids see my times clearly posted, they are more likely to wait until quitting time to ask me some question. Fewer interruptions mean that I can get more work done.

I found that just saying I am going to work the same hours every day didn’t work. First, unless it’s written down, it isn’t real to the kids. Second, my brain fought it because working at home should come with the added benefit of flexibility. Third, unless it’s written down, it isn’t real to me either. Now, I think twice before heading to the grocery store or agreeing to help someone out during working hours.

The calendar you use doesn’t need to be elaborate or expensive. I use a dollar-store monthly planner. I removed the heavy plastic cover so that it would hang with a couple of magnets on the fridge door. I like that I don’t have to fill in the calendar dates as I would with a dry erase board. I fill in my schedule weekly, usually on Sundays.

A posted, written schedule is just one tool to help you reap the benefits - and earnings - of working from home. When it comes down to it, the only freedom that comes with working from home is being your own boss. But with it, you can choose how many hours you work and how much money you earn. From there, you pay the appropriate price with self-discipline and hard work.

Map Yourself

I love organizing myself. It’s my favorite time-waster. Though my closets are cluttered and my work desk lacks rhyme or reason, my personal information - calendar, contacts, tasks - is impeccably maintained. I couldn’t care less about physical clutter. But, when I unload all that mental clutter into a planner system, I feel like I just laid the bricks to my very own yellow brick road.

In a recent re-organizing project with stellar time-wasting potential, I discovered Joerg Mueller’s FreeMind software. It makes those great mind-mapping drawings of circles and lines only without the confines of paper edges. I immediately had a vision of a giant web-like matrix detailing my growth as a writer. I could survey all my goals, learning strategies and revenue streams in right-brain language. Naturally, paid writing could wait while I created this virtual map detailing the roads and mountains on my journey of being a writer.

Creating a Monster

I downloaded the free software and placed the Mother circle in the center of the great white space. I titled it “Develop the Writer.” It quickly grew legs and tumors. I gave the tumors action names that began with “I” like “I am a focused writer” and “I know my craft.” Each of those had legs and smaller tumors that detailed the actions needed to live the statements.

It wasn’t long before I had created an impressive, monstrous spider. For some reason, I felt about as repulsed as I would if it were actually a mutant spider. The mind map had accomplished everything that I needed from it. What had before been a stale list of tasks had become a breathing big picture. I could see how everything I was doing fit with my goals of being a freelance writer. Yet, it turned my stomach and I didn’t know why.

It Lives

I stepped away and thought about it for a day or so. It occurred to me that the spider was only an outgrowth of a larger life. If it were a spider plant, writing would only be the little plantlet hanging on the ends of the much larger parent plant. Writing isn’t rooted in its own soil. It gets its nourishment from a larger specimen without which the writing is airless and dead. I craved a mind map that would value balance.

I renamed the Mother circle “Be Whole.” It grew a tumor titled “Develop the Writer.” I attached all the work I had done to this child tumor. Then I created other circles that branched from “Be Whole.” These include “I want to keep my family strong” and “I invite God into my Life.”

Monster Morals

When I feel I have accomplished a task or developed a habit, I put a check in its circle. Mind mapping the most important areas of my life illustrated an important mental block that I’ve been harboring. I’ve had trouble achieving my career goals because I felt that doing so would sacrifice the balance in my life. The mind map reveals that writing does not wipe out those areas I value most. It’s simply another outgrowth of who I am.