Some key points to being productive and not overworking yourself.

Set up a work schedule – based on demands of your life style and stick to it.

Prioritize your work – set a daily, weekly and monthly to do list.

Interruptions and Distractions – even though you are at home you are still at work. Make sure family and friends know your work schedule. If your home office is near a TV – turn it off during work hours.

Procrastinating – Don’t put off projects or tasked that need to be completed – they will only start to pile up adding stress to your work from home environment.

Take time for lunch – be sure to squeeze in time for a small break or lunch. Breaking up day will keep you focused, energetic and will reduce any stress that may be building up throughout day.

Working from home is a dream for many and can be a nightmare for others. Staying focused and not overworking is hard, but benefits of a work from home business should give you freedom and financial life style that you are in search of. This can only be archived if YOU are in control of your home business.

Copyright 2005 – Tim Somers, 3G Enterprises, LLC

Third, learn as much as you can about small business. There is a wealth of information available on this topic and US Small Business Administration is probably as good a place to start as any. Just go to http://www.sba.gov/ and navigate to sections dealing with home based businesses.

Fourth, write a business plan. It is your roadmap to reaching your objectives. There are numerous articles on Internet and in libraries that can assist you in developing your business plan as well as addressing many other issues involved with starting and operating a business from home. As a starting point, here are a couple of Small Business Administration website locations that should prove useful:

http://www.sba.gov/starting/indexbusplans.html http://www.sba.gov/library/pubs.html

And last, but not least, seek advice of a tax professional. Your first reaction may be that you can't afford such expenses right now; but, in reality, you can’t afford not to seek such advice from very beginning of your home business start-up. They can advise you about ways you may be able to reduce amount of taxable business income at end of year. Paying for an hour or two of consultation with a tax professional at beginning will probably save you much more than that amount later on down road.

I never cease to be amazed at number of people that seem to think that some magic is somehow created when you put words "home based" in front of word "business". It's still business...it just happens to be based in home.