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Stress is a fact of life, particularly for work-at-home entrepreneurs who, because we’re sometimes blazing new and unfamiliar territory, tend to shoulder more burden than Atlas.
As “The Barbra” would say, “People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world.” The truth is, we all need people. We need at least one “safe spot” where we can let it all hang out and not worry about being judged, criticized, or taken advantage of.
Your business can be operating like a well-oiled machine, but if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re going to be stressed out. It’s ironic that when things are going really well, we typically end up spending MORE hours on our jobs because we’re just having so much fun and we’re seeing all the fantastic benefits of hard work.
Jack Welch didn’t empty the trash cans at GE. Steve Jobs doesn’t answer all of Apple’s emails. And I bet Meg Whitman never wrote a single piece of code for eBay. Instead, these high-flying execs knew that in order to take their companies to the top, they needed to delegate and outsource.
“Time vampires” are those seemingly harmless pastimes that end up sucking the life and time right out of your day. You sit down to read a few industry blogs and the next time you look up, your daughter has left for college and your son is shaving.
One of my favorite parts of working from home is that I don’t have an office outside our house to go to. What is one of the most stressful parts of working from home? Yep, you guessed it. I don’t have an office outside our house to go to.
After being a work-at-home entrepreneur for over 10 years, I can attest that the toughest item on this list for me, personally, is learning to say no to potential clients or customers. When you work for yourself – especially in the early days – you’re not always sure where that next paycheck is coming from
If you think back over the most stressful times in your life – illness for yourself or a family member, loss of a job or major client, a death in the family – I would venture to say that there’s a common thread through all of these stressful times: Lack of control.
Setting your priorities and sticking to them is a great step towards reducing your stress, but it won’t help much if you don’t have time to finish all the other menial tasks that are involved in running an at-home business. Items like billing, filing, ordering ink for your printer, and a million other little things that pile up over time still need to be done.
If the basics of reading and writing are learning your ABCs, the basics of work-at-home success is setting your priorities. If you don’t have a set of priorities by which to guide your business, your day, and your week, you are at the mercy of circumstance. Happenstance is for people who play the lottery; not for entrepreneurs.
