I’m at the tail end of the baby-boomer generation and I’m an black entrepreneur. I’ve been in business for a quarter of a century but I have never done well working from home. I have often found that after breakfast, no matter what I eat, even decaf coffee, I get lethargic.
I looked online for quite some time find articles on the subject of getting tired when working from home to no avail. Was it the glare from my computer was I missing some kind of vitamins? Then I did a test. I started working at various coffee shops after breakfast in the area, which can be a challenge but at least I was in the midst of people, noise and traffic. Then voila, the lethargy and lack of motivation were gone. It had everything to do with me working from home. It’s the isolation that was making me tired. Ironically, I had come to think that maybe grabbing carbs would help but it made it worse.
We have been trained by our upbringing to understand that where we live is where we rest and our leisure. We eat there, we watch TV or listen to music, we clean up, spend time with the kids if you have them and we sleep there but having an abundance of energy has never been on the agenda so we were not trained to work from home.
In addition, during the day, we were at school while our parents were at work (or mom was at home) so we have never been used to home being a place to be creative and to work. Here are a few tips to help you get over being tired and lacking motivation while working from home.
You may be bored!
I’m guilty of this. For many years, I didn’t like what I was doing. I was not enjoying most of the aspects of my business and it was frustrating me. It wasn’t fun anymore. I started hiring people to do that parts of the business what I least liked and it gave me the space to grow. If you don’t have the finance to hire someone, use services like Fiverr.com. Make sure you pay close attention to the ratings of each candidate. I cannot stress that enough. There are many people who are dishonest when posting their credentials on these sites but the reviews from people who have hired them.
Pay Yourself First!!!
A lot of the times we are feeling drained because we are not taking care of ourselves. The term “pay yourself first” does not just apply to financially it applies to all aspects of running a business like take care of YOU first before you get into the day. Most “emergencies” are not as urgent as we think so if you want to be completely focused and ready for the day you MUST take care of YOU first.
Consider going to the gym and working out for an hour.
Chances are one you start your day, you will keep going all day. Getting to the gym after a long workday is very difficult. Your energy is declining at that point and the gym is packed. Why not go when it’s pretty empty and you can get your day off to a good start and give yourself a great boost for the day.
Drink as much water as you can as soon as you get up
You can literally feel your organs wake up when you do this. Hydrating yourself first thing in the morning is going to give you a great boost of energy and get your body in working order for the day
Don’t look at email or your phone for two hours after you get up
If you are like me when you get up in the morning if you look at one single email you will end up sitting down and working for the next few hours. We all know that one email turns into 10 other things to do. So before you read
Watch Your Spending
When you start getting out of the house to work you will have another problem if you don’t get a handle on it right now. Wasting money on food. It’s enough that you will be using your gas more but having breakfast and lunch out every day and buying expensive coffee from Starbucks, even once a day for a large is $80 a month and including breakfast and lunch at $20.00 more a day adds up to close to $500 a month. What elses could you be doing with that money? You will spend 1/4 of that planning ahead. Having breakfast at home and packing a lunch and still have one coffee a day with refills.
Are you getting enough sleep?
As we get older we need more sleep. Even if you are used to getting up after 4 hours sleep try to go back at getting at least 7 to 8 hours to get good REM sleep in. REM is the most important aspect of your sleep and even with 8 hours of sleep you may average about 1 hour and 10 minutes of REM but that’s good enough. To see how much REM you are getting, get a Fitbit. It will monitor your sleep and pulse and tell you on your phone the next day how you did.
Let home be the place that you relax
At the end of your busy workday THEN you can come home and relax.
