As the queen of the multi-taskers, I often don’t even realize I’m being interrupted until I get to the end of the day and it dawns on me I’ve had a scattered, unproductive, and inefficient day. Motherhood has trained me to be able to adjust to multiple interruptions, but this does not always make for a productive work day. With home-based businesses, we seem to be prone to coping with the interruption problem and it often becomes necessary for us to find a way to MINIMIZE interruptions.
In order to minimize interruptions, it helps to first identify where the interruptions are coming from. Are they coming from family and children? Telephone calls? Neighbors or friends? Other obligations, volunteer projects, or appointments? Identifying just exactly what sort of things are taking you away from your home business or work during the day is the first step in being able to minimize those interruptions.
You might want to also take a look at your schedule. There may be times of the day when interruptions and other obligations are most likely to interfere with work, and other times of the day where you could work more efficiently without the likelihood of interruptions. Just rearranging your schedule may be all you need to minimize the actual interruptions during time you’ve dedicated to your home business.
If rearranging your schedule doesn’t do the trick, you might need to set some stronger boundaries around your work time. If you’ve been letting yourself be available during hours you are supposed to be working, it is going to take some “re-training” to let people know that you’re serious about protecting that time. Turn off the phone (or let personal calls go to voice mail), “post” your work hours, and turn down requests to do other things during hours you’ve dedicated to working. You’ll be conditioning others and yourself that work time is dedicated to work. While you may not be able to eliminate interruptions altogether in your home-based business, you should at least be able to minimize them.
See Also: Breaking Up the Day and How Many Hours a Week Do You Need to Get Your Work Done?