For home-based coaching practices, staying focused is a challenge.

Many coaches operate their practices from home. There are plenty of good reasons to work from home but there are also a few pitfalls. One of the real perils of working from home is getting distracted.

For me distractions mean everything other than work: taking care of the dog, reading non-business email, feeding and re-feeding myself, reading books or magazines not related to my work, surfing web sites, doing chores, reading blogs that are not feeding my business. The list could go on and on and on. . . .

Perhaps even more distracting than non-work related matters is spending time thinking about work ideas that are not related to my immediate tasks. I think it is important to keep the mental doors open to new ideas, to be able to brainstorm, to explore new business concepts or approaches. The problem is, for some of us, those brainstorms can take control of an entire day. . .or longer. The result? We don’t stay focused on our current work.

Here’s the deal I make with myself in order to stay focused on what I need to do today –

Each morning while I am still drinking my first cup of coffee, I give myself 30 minutes to sit with a notepad and take what I call “brainstorming notes” — writing down business ideas that have floated to the surface that I might want to look at more carefully in the future. If something comes up that I think looks promising, I will plan to spend the time I need investigating the idea in more detail. That time has to be scheduled in. . .which leads to my next “staying focused” strategy.

While I am still sitting there with my notepad — before I put myself in front of the computer — I list my tasks for the day, estimate the time for each one, and give them a priority level from A to E. If there is time available, I will schedule in my “brainstorm” ideas. If not, they have to wait for another day. Eventually, I will look at them more carefully — perhaps in the evening when my other tasks are done.

There’s a reason why I write out my task list on a notepad first, before turning on the computer. For me, the computer is one big distraction machine. I want to read all the news I can find, read and respond to tons of email that has nothing to do with work, look at the latest NBA news, check out some blogs, etc. etc. Before I know it, half the morning can be swept away before I’ve even thought about my real job.

So, my rule is that when I go to the computer for the first time each day, my first task is to check the calendar on my Personal Information Manager and enter the task list I wrote on the notepad. That process helps to keep me mentally focused on the things that matter most today. I just remind myself that even home business owners get breaks for lunch (usually), and I can always read the online edition of my local newspaper at noon.

I know that everyone has to develop their own time-management strategy, but I thought I would tell you what works for me. By the way, I’ve used something called Time and Chaos (now called Intellect) for many years as my PIM and contact manager. I’ve tried using Outlook but feel like I am lugging around a 600 pound dead guerrilla whenever I use it. So I stick with Chaos.

This “staying focused” topic has all sorts of alley ways and side-streets — I hope we can go down a few of them.

Got some ideas of your own? Feel free to comment or drop me a line.

Home Business 101: It’s Not about the Money.

This short article first appeared on my blog, Men At Home, a place for men who run a home business. . .or plan to. I’ve wanted to post it here, too, since I know so many coaches who also work for home and had the same “vision thing” that i did when I started my business in 1991. If any of this makes sense to you, or you have has a similar experience, I’d love to hear from you.

– Frank

Why did you decide to start a home business? What were your primary motives?

To get away from a crazy boss? To leave a company that was either sinking or had become too stressful to work for? Was it because you had no choice — the company fired you or, euphemistically, asked you to resign? Did your circumstances at home change and you needed to find a way to spend more time at home and make more money, too?

Was it an opportunity to make lots of money that you were chasing?

Or was your decision to start a home business primarily about realizing a dream you had? You wanted to do something special? Do something no one had done before? Integrate all the dimensions of your life into one place — that “centered life” we used to talk about?

No doubt there are other reasons — and I’d love to hear about yours.

But today I want to tell you what my reasons were and how they have changed slightly over the past 16 years.

Yes, the first little factoid is that I have been working on my own, from home, for over 16 years now. Not every year has been a roaring success — some indeed were rip-roaring disasters, sometimes due to business problems, but more likely due to seismic disruptions in my personal life.

But I really started my own consulting practice — first called Maracom and then Emerge Communications — because I had a vision of what work and life were supposed to be about. I was 40 when I did this, so I was not naive or simple-minded about it. I believed that the time I spent working was important time and ought to contribute to my overall growth as a person and my self-actualization as a human being.

Lofty goals, indeed. Though the vision-thing was a bit amorphous, what I was moving away from was also very clear to me: away from demeaning, counter-productive office politics, co-workers and senior executives who would lie to look good or get a promotion, the daily tensions and stresses that come from working in a mis-managed environment where no one trusted anyone else.

The odd thing is that I was not the only one who felt that way. A very close friend felt the same way. He was a bright Dartmouth grad, and always willing to work with me on internal conspiratorial projects. But for him, and for the rest of my coworkers, what seemed like a sickness to me seemed like normal to them. I kept wondering what was wrong with me when I felt driven to leave and they field duty-bound to suffer and stay.

My friend later told me it was primarily fear — the fear that comes from leaving the safety of the mother ship, even though the ship was sinking. He said there was too much risk to go out on his own. Then, in rapid succession he was hired and laid off by a number of corporations. That elusive, riskless, workplace he was seeking never materialized.

When I started my home business, it was not about the money. It was about a vision of how I wanted to work and how I wanted to live. My work — marketing consulting and publishing — became a means to that end. Even with the work I did, I was picky about who I worked for. There was no sense ditching Mr. Mean at corporate for another Mr. Mean as a client.

There’s more to this story — I had just gotten started and it looked like I could give this story a happy ending. But there were a few detours –personal and business detours that changed the vision and the strategy to achieve it. Those changes have also meant a re-examination of what I am doing now. . .and why. That said, even though it has been 16 years, one thing has stayed constant: it is still not about the money.

Talk to you later. . . .