A Creative Income guest post by Lisa Ng from This Beautiful Day.
I’ve been blogging since June 2010. I made the transition into full-time blogging and freelance writing in October of 2011. In addition to working on This Beautiful Day, a lifestyle blog for smart women, I also do a mix of consulting, digital strategy, and social media work for different clients.
I work from home, and I work for myself, and there are definitely a whole set of challenges that come with that. After some fine-tuning, I have finally found a schedule that works for me. Here’s what my typical work-from-home schedule looks like!
8:00 AM – Get out of bed and start checking email and social media feeds for anything that requires my immediate attention. This is a terrible habit that I’d like to drop, but because I work on Pacific Time, and most of my clients and readers live on Eastern Time, I always feel behind when I wake-up.
8:20 AM – Drink a giant glass of lemon water (if I haven’t already), put on my workout clothes (I’m an optimist) and finish getting ready. Breakfast is usually a bowl of berries with almond milk, slivered hemp hearts and a big spoonful of almond butter. I get my fruit, fiber and protein fix in one go.
9:00 AM – Since I work from home, there’s no crazy commute, but I try to be sitting at my desk working by 9 AM everyday. I’m the most productive first thing in the morning, so I don’t schedule meetings or exercise until later on in the day. I attack my social media shares first and then work on my toughest project of the day, or the one with the closest deadline. I also delete and unsubscribe to newsletters as I go – here’s how I keep my inbox at zero.
Noon – Lunch! Usually leftovers or a Trader Joe’s salad. Take a mental break and watch the local news or Food Network. If I’m getting a lot done, I schedule a one hour lunchtime yoga class and eat lunch when I get back.
1:00 PM – Coffee or green tea and diving back into my to-do list, writing a new blog post, shooting a video, doing a photo shoot, trying out a new recipe or working on client stuff. I might throw in a load of laundry, clean the kitchen or deal with the dishes. I try to spread out my chores throughout the day and work in 25-minute increments, so I get up and move around before hitting another thing on my to-do list.
4:00 PM – I usually hit my creativity limit at this point in the day and the afternoon slump hits. This is the best time for me to go to the gym or to a barre class and take another break.
5:30 PM – Come home, shower, start making dinner.
7:00 PM – Back on my laptop to deal with any emails that came in late in the day, program up any other social shares or blog posts to go up tomorrow and finish up any other work.
8:00 PM – Downtime. It’s so important to chill-out, read a magazine or watch a movie. It keeps me from getting sick or frazzled. I didn’t value it much before, but it keeps me in check.
Do you work from home? What sort of schedule do you keep?
Lisa Ng is the Editor-in-Chief of This Beautiful Day, a lifestyle blog for smart women. You can follow her adventures on Twitter @helloLisaNg or on Instagram @ThisBeautifulDay
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