My commute...

is nonexistent. I don't get the time in the car like most people to unwind from work and a crazy hectic day. Instead, my "office" is about 15 feet from my family room and I walk by it a 100 times a day when I am not actually working. I never really leave work, but I never really leave home either. In my case, I couldn't get to sleep at night, there was always something else that needed to be done. As far as work goes, I do my work when I can through out the day and most of it at night after my girls asleep. Which is where my problems started. I was always working at night right before bed, it is really the only time I have to work uninterupted. So I was having issues with stopping work at bed time. I seemed to always go to bed thinking about work, what else needs to be done, or the one thing that kept me up most of all...designing quilt patterns in my head!

So I came up with a system to help myself get to sleep without thinking! Read a book. Any book about anything but quilting, business or building websites. It started when the new Jennifer Chiaverini book came out, one of the Elm Creek Quilts Novels. I know that is about quilting, but it is a novel, a story line, not a how to book. I do have to admit that the Elm Creek novels are too good and I was still up at night, but it did get my mind off work. Now I read other books, mostly Dean Koontz novels but I will read others too every now and then.

Reading takes my mind off my work and makes it easier to fall asleep. I make sure I leave myself an hour or however long I want to spend reading. Usually I have to set an alarm to remind myself of the time and then another alarm to remind myself to stop reading. The trick is to listen to the alarms and have self discipline. That can be hard when you are really into whatever it is your doing, but it helps to keep yourself well rested and sane and keep up your drive and motivation to work from home.

I hope this helps some of you work from home people out there.