If you are working from your home, it is easy to "lose control" and slip into bad habits. You must exercise same discipline that would exist in an office, where you had to arrive at a certain time in morning, and work a full day.

While you can basically start your day, and end it when you wish if you work from home, you must maintain some semblance of discipline. Simply being there for a certain number of hours is not answer, if those hours are not productive. But beauty of working from home is that you do not have to have a regular schedule.

If your business is people oriented, you have to be available when your prospective clients are available to you. If it is product oriented, it really makes little difference when you work. Some people are morning people and achieve their best productivity then - so do it then. Others are "night owls" and that is their best time.

If you aren't in a situation where you have to be available during certain hours, pick whatever works best for you. A better way is to establish goals to meet. If you meet your goals each day, it doesn't matter when you accomplish them. Personally, I prefer to meet all of my daily goals in morning when I'm fresh, and then, do what I wish for rest of day.

Are You a PR Chowderhead?

You are if you stand by while your public relations people futz around with communications tactics instead of nailing down those outside audience behaviors that help you reach your objectives.

No slap at communications tactics. They come in real handy at right time, as noted later in this piece.

But real public relations opportunity lies with this reality: People act on their own perception of facts before them, which leads to predictable behaviors about which something can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action those people whose behaviors affect organization, public relations mission is accomplished.

What it does for you, is put spotlight where it belongs by delivering key external audience behaviors you need to help achieve your mission objectives. So look at tactics for what they are -- no substitute for a primary public relations effort.

For example, change perceptions and, thus, behaviors among those important outside audiences of yours, then watch for activity like customers making repeat purchases, capital givers or specifying sources looking your way, prospects starting to do business with you, community leaders seeking you out, organizations proposing strategic alliances and joint ventures, and legislators and political leaders viewing you as a key member of business, non-profit or association communities.

It just isn’t that hard to do it right.

Check out PR work underway in your unit for activities like these. Has anyone listed those outside audiences with greatest impact on your specific operation? Has that list been prioritized according to severity of those impacts?

Do you have any real idea of how those key target audiences at top of list perceive your organization? That’s really important because, as fundamental premise cited earlier notes, those perceptions inevitably morph into behaviors that can help or hurt achieving your unit objectives.

Of course there’s work involved in pulling this off. You, your colleagues or somebody, must get out there and interact with members of that key target audience.