Lost In The Words

Productivity can be the downfall of many freelancers and finding the right formula to crank out the necessary amount of work in a day is tough. Those of us who work from home, particularly those with small children, have dozens of factors that can mess with our productivity for the day. For instance, today my middle child has decided our house needs a bit of seasoning, and half my morning was spent cleaning up that mess.

I have learned to not count on daytime hours, when I'm alone with the babies, to get anything major accomplished. If they are content or napping, I might squeeze in some research or work on a project for a few minutes, but I try to make sure that there is nothing pressing me to complete it during the day. I write at night, after my hubby is home and after everyone goes to bed, so that the daytime distractions have less of an effect on how much I turn out in a day.


The thing that seems to get me the most is procrastination. I tend to put things off, for a variety of reasons. Kristen King wrote a wonderful post about beating procrastination a couple of weeks ago, that I somehow missed until last night. She talks about finding your root cause to help combat the problem of procrastinating. Within her list of causes, I can identify with each at different times. For me, there is no one solid answer as to why I procrastinate. I'm just glad that I work well under the pressure of a deadline!


I have found that if you know a certain time of day or a specific situation is a complete productivity killer, plan your smaller projects for that time. Leave the bigger things for times that you can concentrate and work uninterrupted. If you do that, then you will only have to fight your own personal demons, rather than battling the outside interruptions on your work.