Motivation is perhaps the single biggest factor in making the difference between success and failure in any business venture. Surveys have shown that poorly motivated employees, however hard they are worked, consistently produce poorer work than those who may work less hours but have better motivation.
But what gives us our motivation differs with our personalities. For some people, motivation is largely external. They work hard because they have external rewards to motivate them — a pay cheque, the approval of colleagues, or a boss breathing down their neck. However, when you work at home, you are largely out of sight — and possibly out of mind — of your boss. (This is the major reason cited by managers for their opposition to teleworking. In a recent Department of Trade and Industry study, many managers said that they did not approve of teleworking, because without a boss to manage employees their work would invariably decline.) Even more challenging, you may actually be your own boss. If you have been the sort of person who regards the boss’s holiday as a good reason to down tools yourself, you may well have problems working from home.
You may also have difficulty working from home, if teamwork is a major motivating factor for you. If you worked in an office where every success was celebrated by your team and letting the side down was the greatest sin, it may be hard to adjust to the fact that the rest of the team are now fifty miles away — or even that you are now your own ‘team’. In order to make a success of working from home, it is vital that you learn to become self-motivated. If you lack self-motivation, you may well find yourself getting up too late, working half-heartedly and cleaning the kitchen floor when you should be doing your accounts.
It sounds easy enough, but even the hardest-working employee can feel a sudden drop in enthusiasm when faced with the temptations of domestic life. Lizzie, for instance, was a hard-working veterinary assistant who gave up her job to start a designer knitwear business from home. She’d enjoyed knitting as a hobby and started off with a full order book — but she found working from home sapped her motivation. ‘It didn’t really work for me,’ she recalls. ‘Somehow there were always more pressing things that needed doing. I’d go to the shops for my lunch hour — but the hour would turn into an afternoon. I was easily distracted and found it hard to get through the work I had. In the end, I rented premises. It was expensive, but I became so much more efficient and have found it much better for me and the business.’
Many prospective homeworkers share Lizzie’s difficulty in getting down to work at home. However, for many it is a teething stage, before they find a strategy to give them the same degree of motivation which was previously given by the boss or co-workers.
There are a variety of strategies which you can try in order to increase your self-motivation. They include:
Giving yourself goals to work towards. If you work for a company, these can be agreed with your direct line manager. If you work for yourself, you will need to set them. However, be aware that in order for goal-setting to be successful, the goals need to be :
- Realistic — set them too high and you will only feel frustrated when you fail. Set them too low and you will become demotivated once they are accomplished.
- On-going — once one goal is achieved you need to set yourself another. If you are starting your own business, you may also want to increase the size of your goals as your business expands.
- Have an element of reward or incentive in them. The rewards could be as simple as making yourself a cup of coffee after you’ve completed a particular task — or they could be much more lavish.
Making your own routine is another useful self-motivator - just as if you were in an office. You might decide to start work at 9 a.m., take a Coffee break at 11.30 and then continue working again ten minutes later, with a lunch break of an hour. Most homeworkers swear that setting yourself a list of tasks to do the evening before is a good way to gee yourself into action. Another is to ensure that you have to make a phone call first thing each morning. ‘I make myself a list each night of what I’m going to do the following day,’ says Paul Curitz, a computer expert and consultant. ‘I never get quite to the end of it, so there’s always a list ready for the following day.’
Setting deadlines can also be an excellent way to discipline yourself to work, although they have to be realistic in order to ensure your efficiency. If deadlines are set too tightly, you may find yourself panicking; if they are too loose, you will just amble towards them. If you are working for an employer, or in a service area, your deadlines are likely to be chosen for you. Even if they are not, it is worth pinning your boss or client down and asking them to agree schedules with you.
`I previously worked as a solicitor in the City where deadlines were all important,’ says Katharine Goodison, who left her high-flying job to become a self-employed milliner. ‘Some of those deadlines were unrealistic, but it was good discipline. Now if I have a client who isn’t bothered about exactly when they get their hat, I sit down with them and make them agree deadlines. It helps me and it doesn’t upset them.’
Not all of these methods will work for you - but it is likely that at least one of them will. Experiment with them to see which you prefer. Remember, the more motivated you are, the better your results will be.
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