Sometime in mid-October, I wrote about bouncing back from a failure after losing some of my projects. I had to act as fast as I could to keep my business afloat. Not that I had doubts about ever winning projects again, but I felt insecure.
So, while I was bidding for projects, I was also producing content about work, travels, and sharing stories as a parent. It kept my mind off the worries and allowed me to focus on the important matters. It helps to have a reliable hosting and domain services that gets the job done fast.
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What goals should you have when working-from-home
Today, although I am still halfway through reaching my self-imposed revenue quota, I found my groove again.
Yes, I am overworked, trying to carve time in between raising a kid and managing projects. Any day the burn out could set it. But instead, I focus on the things that I could do to thrive in this lifestyle.
A preview of what the work-from-home lifestyle could give you and your loved ones
Kerrigan and I en route to Paris in October.
My goals are clear, although my eyes are at times blurry from lacking sleep. I don’t usually count the hours of work I do in a week, but for this blog, I did. And guess what, ever since I started working for myself, more or less, I am doing 88 hours a week of work while being around my daughter 24/7.
I still have tons of things to do, but setting aside a few minutes to write about my experience and learnings help a lot in regaining my energy to move forward.
Take some notes if we are on the same boat.
Here they are:
The importance of ‘working with my clients’ rather than ‘working for my clients’
I learned about the term “order taker” when I had my first-hand experience while working in a company that has an ‘agency-ish’ set up. It merely meant agreeing with everything and anything that a client tells you to do without sharing your recommendations. To be honest, I had a hard time learning this lesson. I had to go through hell to get this simple lesson, and it took me some time again to practice it. The thing is sometimes when we are almost drowning in stuff trying to keep our head above the water to breathe, we neglect the other important thing, and that is to provide extra value to our clients. By merely keeping the conversation alive, updating them with industry news and making them feel that you are just a chat away gives the security that they have a reliable team.
A quick break from work
Working-from-home gives parents the advantage to be with their kids, but it doesn’t mean we have to stay indoors. So what I would typically do is schedule trips with my daughter.
A Holiday visit to Lakbay Museo. Get your tickets for only P 599 on Klook instead of the P799 walk-in rate.
We would also visit family and friends abroad or create DIY projects at home to keep things fun.
Recently, my daughter and I participated in two trick or treating events, one in the mall and another one in our village. It’s tiring for sure! But you can’t trade the good fun memories and the fun times. You’ll be surprised to feel the effects of having a fresh mind when you go back to focusing on doing your work again.
The Drive to Win and Thrive (repeat 100x)
I always believed that your drive to do great work is always based on how bad you want to achieve your goals. That’s what keeps me going. I could feel that my eyes are drooping from the lack of sleep, but my drive to achieve my goals is what keeps me sharp. But not all days are the same. Sometimes you need to get the full 10 hours of sleep to refresh your mind. Sometimes you won’t feel like working for an entire day. Sometimes you’ll feel your loss. All of those downtimes are fine. It happens. Do a self-reflection to understand as to why you are feeling down and find ways to improve your mood.
For me watching inspirational videos always help. Learning something new about the industry gives me tons of ideas. Looking at how happy and funny my daughter, reminds me that I am the number one role model to a tiny human so I cannot afford to fuck up.
The Bottomline
I love what I do, and when you have so much passion and faith in the industry that you chose, you’d be wishing for more opportunities to work rather than asking for more breaks from work. However, it doesn’t mean that I want to spend the rest of my life working.
Everything has an ultimate end goal. For me, it is to have more time enjoying some fun and silly moments with my daughter. So maybe a year from now, my 88-hr work week will be reduced to 8-hr a week only because I have a bigger and stronger team to delegate most of my tasks.
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