Motivation is one of the major challenges for people working from home.  Motivation is vital to being more productive and making more money.  It’s easy to become lethargic while working from a home office.  People that have a home-based business such as medical transcription, typically miss the energy created by working with colleagues at a standard office.  The motivating factor of impressing the boss no longer applies.  What can you do? Here are some useful tips to keep you motivated and focused while working from home.

Set goals for yourself: Goals are motivating.  Set goals such as making an extra $100 a week or obtaining five new clients per month or taking only seven hours to do the work it usually takes eight hours to do.  If you don’t achieve your goals, don’t pout, keep trying!

Productive hours: For most people there are certain times of the day when their productivity level significantly rises.  These are not the times to read emails, chat with friends, or perform routine work tasks.  These are the times to take on the big challenges you have been postponing or work on top priority projects.

Office hours at home: Regular office hours usually remind people to be professional and that work is the primary focus.  Don’t take care of chores during your working hours or take time off to watch television or play video games.  However, allow yourself a specific amount of time for breaks during the day.  Log in and out for breaks and for lunch.  Scheduling breaks and lunches helps prevent wasting two hours on breaks and spending too much time on lunch each day.

Get organized: A cluttered office can be a little depressing.  A well organized office can put you in a better mood and make you feel more like a professional.

Limit distractions: It’s easy to get distracted while working in a home office.  Children, pets, phone calls, email, computer games, social networking sites and online shopping can take up chunks of time and you’ve easily wasted an hour of your working day.  Only respond to personal email during your breaks and don’t create an unscheduled break just to respond to personal email!  Use your call display to determine if you should answer the phone during working hours.  Don’t get involved with those unnecessary text messages you received.

Dress for work: You don’t have to wear a suit and tie but wear clothes that are appropriate to be seen in if one of your clients shows up at your home.  It’s difficult for a work-at-home professional to feel vibrant and motivated while wearing pajamas.  You probably never heard a highly successful business owner promoting the benefits of wearing pajamas to work.  If you’re personal habits falter it’s likely your work habits will also decline.

Dedicated work space: It’s easy to lose motivation if you don’t have a professional work setting.  The couch in your living room is not the best choice for a home office.  However, changing the scenery once in a while can be refreshing and motivating.  Also, family members should realize they should stay out of the home office during working hours.  They can spend time with you during lunch and breaks.

Take time off: Take short vacations every quarter and have some fun.  Working all day and night can easily make work boring and motivation declines.  Get away from the computer and spend time with friends and family.  MySpace and Facebook can easily become the social life of work-at-home professionals.  Hang out with real people!  You’ll feel better.  Remember, most people stretched out on their death bed surrounded by friends and family members don’t say “Oops! I should have spent more time at the office.”

To-do list: A list is an excellent way to keep track of the tasks that need to be done and when they need to be completed.  First thing on the list; take off the pajamas and put on some working clothes.  Yes, indeed.  You can use the list to set up your schedule for the next day.

Get exercise: Take a fast paced walk or a couple of them during the day.  It’s important to get away from the office. Exercise makes people feel better.  While you’re on your walk don’t think about work!  Also, if you’re sitting in a chair all day get up occasionally and stretch your arms and legs.

Change projects: If you get bogged down on a project, put it away and work on a different project for a while.  Choose a project that is not similar to the one you were working on.  When you go back to the other project you will probably have new ideas and fresh energy.

You can make a higher income by staying motivated and focused.  Being motivated and focused can also keep you from feeling bored during the working day.  Treat your home-based business as if it were located in a traditional office.  Also, make sure to have some fun during the day.

Brian Jenkins writes about Career and Education Topics for Braintrack.com.  His work has been cited by many major organizations, including the Career Services Center at Xavier University.

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This is a guest post by Kathy Wilson. If you are interested in doing a guest article here, check out the guest blogging guidelines.

If you think it’s the easiest way to make money, then that’s probably why you’ve still not been able to make it rich while trying to find mother lode on the Internet. But don’t worry, you’re not alone in this regard – most people have no clue as to what goes on in the online world when it comes to making the big bucks; all they see is the sound of money falling into their bank accounts even as they sit at home and work just their thumbs.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), that’s not how money is made online; in fact, it’s more of a struggle to see a few bucks through your online venture than work at a daily job that while requiring you to adhere to timings and a schedule, at least pays you a fixed amount every month. The problem with trying to earn online is that you may taste great success one month and utter failure the next – your income takes the shape of a sine wave that goes up and comes down, only this wave is more choppy than regular.

So to answer the question in the title of this blog post, yes, it is possible to make money online, even today when the Internet has become saturated with entrepreneurs and marketers, and it seems like there’s no room for anyone else on board. The only hitch is that you must be extremely talented, highly skilled, and willing to use both brains and hard work to make it work.

• Opportunities do exist in the creative sector – if you’re a writer or a graphic artist who can work from home through the Internet, it’s easy to get yourself a few clients and regular assignments once you’ve established your reputation as a trustworthy and reliable worker.
• If you’re selling stuff online, the best place to do so is through eBay or any other established selling site – you may be tempted to set up your own site, but it’s a long shot at success and too much hard work and initial disappointment to be worth it.
• Writing a blog has paid off for many an aspiring author, but it’s not because they earn thousands every month through their blog; mostly it’s because they’ve managed to secure book deals or because they have their fingers in more than one pie – they attract revenue from advertisements on more than one site and invest in multilevel marketing schemes that depend on other people’s dedication to make them rich.

It’s not prudent to quit your regular job and take to making money online unless you’re assured of a minimum sum every month; while it’s possible to make a decent amount if you have the time to dedicate to your various ventures on the net, remember that the web is a fickle mistress – she can change in an instant and leave you out in the cold. So don’t forsake the stability of a wife and home (your regular job) for the glamor of a seductive temptress – once the sheen wears away, you find that you’re unable to deal with the muck underneath.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Kathy Wilson, who writes on the topic of x-ray technician school programs. She welcomes your comments at her email id: kathywilson1983 (at) gmail (dot) com.

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We are at the fag end of 2009.  Yet another year has passed so quickly and we are older (and wiser) by one more year!  It’s time to take stock of our accomplishments last year, assess the effectivity of the already made resolutions, plan activities for the next year, and make New Year resolutions.  Where do you want to be financially and career wise the same time next year?  Proper planning and execution takes you well ahead of others in your career.

It’s also time to look back and take count of last year’s accomplishments here at MT Herald.  How did the posts fare and which were the top hits? Here is a list of those top ten medical transcription articles at MT Herald in 2009 for those newbies who might have missed them.  The posts are stacked in the descending order with relation to the hits they got, with the highest one at the top.

Free Medical Spell Checker For Microsoft Word, Custom Dictionary
A super duper success.  With no other such reliable free medical spell checker available on the Internet, this article received warm welcome and is still receiving good hits consistently for the queries free medical transcription software, free medical spell checker etc.

The Future And Other Side Of Outsourcing And Offshoring To India
With HIPAA tightening its grip, there exists a doubt in the air about the future of outsourcing healthcare services abroad from the US.  In this article, we tried to get some clues about the future of outsourcing trend and had a look at the other side of the coin of outsourcing and offshoring.

How EMR Is Going To Affect Medical Transcription Industry?
With the new healthcare reforms under process in the US, a question naturally arises in every transcriptionist’s mind – Will EMR take over the job of transcription from transcriptionists? (Similar to the fear at the turn of this decade when SRT was predicted to replace transcriptionists!)  Though doctors still prefer transcriptionists, in this article, we were trying to get a definite answer from the industry stalwarts about the future of medical transcription post HITECH as more emphasis has been given to EMR in the healthcare reforms by President Obama.

How Twitter Can Help You Find A Medical Transcription Job?
Social media is not just there to pass time or for hobby or for networking.  How about using social media networking, especially Twitter, to find your dream job?  In this article we were trying to take advantage of social media networking to our advantage in finding a job with the precedence we saw in other fields.

Free Auto Text Word Expander Softwares For Medical Transcription
Speed, speed, speed!  The mantra of increasing productivity for medical transcriptionists.  So if you have free text expanders for that purpose, it is double joy.  In this post, we tried to find some of the free text expander softwares available on the Internet.

Tips & Techniques To Minimize Distractions In Home Transcription
Umpteen distractions creep in while we work at home.  How to tackle or minimize those distractions?  While trying to find answers for those troubles, we got some new ideas from readers too!

Which Medical Transcription Educational Course Should I Join?
Troubling question for anybody willing to get into medical transcription career, whether to join an online course or a course conducted at a school and so on.  In this article, we were trying to get answer for all such questions.

Free Voice File Player Downloads Compatible With All Foot Pedals
In our endeavor in trying to find a list of free voice file players that could be used for medical transcription, we were able to find a few.  Check out if any of those could be useful for you and worth adding to your kitty of medical transcription software.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Medical Transcription Career
A complete guide with answers for all the common questions a medical transcription career aspirant wants to know before foraying into medical transcription.

HIPAA Compliance Guidelines & Tips For Medical Transcriptionists
With HIPAA getting more powers with the enactment of HITECH, it is better to brush up our knowledge on HIPAA and our duties with relation to HIPAA.

Though posts like SiCKO got good response, they are not included here being off topic.

With that we come to the end of 2009.  I wish the readers of MT Herald a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

3 Comments

• At July 7, 2010, Sabyasachi Sen wrote:

  I am a transcriptionist and i am in the related field for the last 5 yrs now with all rumors, I am worried about the fact that should I stick to this industry or not, as there is lot of doubt in my mind that would transcription job will be available or not in the coming 20-25 yrs. If u kindly clear my doubt

• At July 7, 2010, Raj wrote:

  Please refer the articles How EMR (EHR) Is Going To Affect Medical Transcription Industry? and The Future And Other Side Of Outsourcing And Offshoring To India to get a fair idea about this profession in India for the next two decades.

• At July 12, 2010, jason wrote:

  While doctors and outpatient programs are slow to purchase EMRs for financial reasons, government support is likely to speed adoption. Help is provided for affiliated physicians implement an EMR govt. is launching other initiatives to ensure physicians with or without an EMR system can easily access their patients’ records. Outpatient records are also available to hospital staff during a patient’s admission, as combined inpatient and outpatient EMRs make for a true electronic continuum of care.

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