To Love Flex Time In A Small Business
The most enjoyable part of running your own business is the time flexibility it can give you. Some people really enjoy being tied down to a schedule but I generally prefer working at a more relaxed rate. This means that I am often up till who knows when in the night and usually I end up sleeping in. Sometimes different customers can affect my standard sleep schedule but the fact that I have fun during work just cannot make a day bad.
My definition of work:
Work is time I spend not enjoying myself.
This means any time I wish I was doing anything else but what I am doing is work (like when I do the dishes). Due to working for myself I find that almost 100% of what I do is not work!
Time flexibility is the number 1 reason I promote working for yourself. While my boss may be a jerk (inside joke since my boss is me), chances are your boss is much nicer than mine. Getting things done is still important but why are you killing yourself during the best parts of the day.
Making the most of my time is very important to me. I know how easy it is to decide to do nothing all day. It doesn’t take very long of doing nothing all day before you have no income and begin starving though. So to prevent starvation you need to ensure effective time management. For most this means ensuring that work has been completed every day before you start playing. For others it means learning how to balance play with work.
My mentality is to play during work. Personally I believe that if you are not having fun during work then you must be working and if you are working then you should go get a job since its easier.
If you are looking for how to take time off in your crazy busy schedule you should look at my article: Taking Time Off In A Small Business (part 2, part 3). If you are looking for how to manage to keep working when all you want to do is play then you will need to stay tuned for next week when I will be running a series on how to work when you don’t want to.
Image Credit: Greg Gladman
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If you don’t love what you do, you need to reconsider your line of work, either at a full time office job or working at home. Working at home provides a lot of flexibility, but like you said, it’s 100% work to be successful- a lot of people don’t understand that and end up hating their ‘home work’ more!