Self-employment that involves working from home is popular in today's culture and can be a profitable way to make a living. What is forfeited in benefits from traditional on-site employment such as paid medical and paid vacations is often more than made up for in being able to stay home to raise children and/or avoid high transportation and clothing costs. However, low productivity when working at home can have a severe effect on monthly income. Productivity for those who work from home can be increased by increasing billable hours, practicing proper time management, remaining organized, and staying focused on work tasks rather than home tasks during working hours.
Understanding the difference between billable and non-billable hours is the first step in increasing productivity when working from home. Billable hours refer to time spent on tasks that you can bill directly to your client or customer. For example, time spent on website design for a client's website which you are being paid to design is billable; time spent filing and making sales calls is not billable time since you cannot bill the client for those tasks.
Many people just beginning to work from home make the mistake of thinking that because they are busy all day that they are being productive in their work. Keeping a notebook with separate columns to track time spent on billable and non-billable hours is a good way of understanding whether each working day is being used productively. More time spent on billable tasks rather than non-billable tasks might be needed in order to increase productivity to earn the amount of income desired.
For example, if your income is based on charging $30 (USD) per hour, but you are making $60 (USD) less per day than you need, you can make up the difference by adding two more billable hours to your workday. If you can increase your productivity even further by doing your work faster, you can earn even more money. The savings may even allow you to hire someone to do some of your non-billable office tasks such as filing and bookkeeping.
Good time management and organizational skills help increase productivity. Time spent looking for papers and supplies can be better spent on billable work. Save the amount of time spent checking and reading mail and email by planning certain times of the day to do these tasks. Lengthy telephone calls can also eat away productive, billable time so keep calls as short and as planned as possible.
A big productivity blocker for many who work from home, especially those just starting to work from home, is doing housework throughout the day. Not only are household jobs non-billable, they distract from productivity for your business because they have nothing to do with the business. It is absolutely crucial to separate work hours from home hours and your business from the rest of your home. Achieving maximum productivity requires a focused approach to work.
