I envisioned sleeping in, casual days in my PJ’s and vacation time whenever I felt like it.  My kids would have more time with me, my home life would be organized and my career would continue to blossom.

Reality check.

Working at home brings with it, tremendous benefits including the freedom and flexibility of carving out your own path, making your own choices and essentially, being your own boss.

But there’s a downside to working with such freedom.  With no real deadlines, no supervision and for the most part, no accountability.  You are in complete control and that is as equally liberating as it is outright terrifying.

I’ve been a work at home mom for nearly 12 years, and still to this day I sometimes struggle to stay focused, motivated and on track.  I find myself breezing through entire work days wondering “where did the time go?”, or in putting off personal projects only to abandon them altogether for a “new” idea that pops into my head.

So, after years of this repeated cycle with incredibly successful months followed by rock bottom bouts of distraction and lack of focus, I decided to do something about it, and actually document my daily tasks.

You’d be surprised at just how much easier it is to effectively manage your time when you are forced to literally write down what you plan to do each day and then evaluate what you actually got done. (It’s a bit shocking for a lot of us when we begin to really analyze our time-sucking habits).

Here are a few changes that I made that dramatically boosted my overall productivity:

Dirty Habit: Wake up, check my iphone for new emails before I even rolled out of bed, take a shower and then get into the office where I’d again check my email and spend time “researching” (a.k.a surfing the Internet forums needlessly)

Changes: Wake up, shower and head into the office. Email program does not get opened until I have checked off at least two items on my “to do” list.  For the most part, I challenge myself to see how much I can get done before I give in and load up my mail program.  (As a constant email checking fanatic THIS was a challenge)

Results:  Just by pushing my email until the end of the day, I have increased my overall productivity by 200%.  Emails are an important part of your online business, especially customer support issues however regardless of your industry or market they CAN and should be pushed down your priority list until you have completed other things.  Checking your email every 60 seconds will kill your productivity faster than anything else.

Dirty Habit: Browse forums and websites and check my voice mail messages throughout the day, log onto chat programs and Instant messengers.

Changes: I avoid forums, communities and boards like the plague. And this also applies to social communities (yes, you need to step away from your twitter account )..  It really amazed me to really evaluate just how much time I spent updating my “status”, posting tweets, Facebook messages, checking voice mail, and browsing thread after thread on industry forums.  ALL of this behavior will sabotage your efforts, and keep you sitting at your desk for hours and hours a day while making absolutely no progress.

Note to self: More than 5 browser tabs open at once is a no-no.

Instead, reward yourself with an hour of “browse time” at the end of your work day, or better yet, get off the computer and spend some time with your friends and family.  You need to recharge your batteries in order to be at your best.

(I know it’s tough. that Skype message blinking can be really hard not to click on, and the thought of missing someone’s tweet might drive you crazy at first, depending on how much of an addict you are, but believe me, once you’ve begun to make these changes and see just how much more you get done in a day, you’ll wish you had started making these changes sooner.)

After one week of making small but steady changes to the way I structured my workday, I was able to:

• Write 3 ebooks (60+ pages)
• Write 7 reports
• Write 2 Sales pages
• Set up an entire blog with a customized theme (the one you’re on right now =)
• Set up 2 JVs with other developers
• Found time to actually call my mother

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As for time management courses, there are literally hundreds available online and I’ve read through dozens of them only to be told that the secret to effectively boosting my productivity was to shut down my Internet connection (as if that’s going to happen) or to go to extremes with blocking out all forms of human contact.

If you work from home with a family and kids, that’s much easier said than done. Instead, you need to work around all obstacles and balance out every workday so at the end of it all, you’re able to feel good about the progress you made.

The best and most straightforward course on time management that I’ve ever read (and watched, as there are videos included) was released by Jason Fladlien. You can check it out at: http://imtimemanagement.com/ (no aff link)