Escape the Rat Race For Life - Organising a Professional Life at Home With a Defined Purpose

Starting a Home Business beyond the Rat Race is the Holy Grail for many whom have been punching time clocks and reluctantly tolerating co-workers, supervisors, work place politics, egos and incompetence in their former vocation.

Business Life From Home Is a Whole Lot Different!

Beginning a Work From Home Enterprise is normally a pretty exciting and unique experience for most newbies. The change of surroundings, products, people and cultural shifts are a "BUZZ" for a while, however this new found "FREEDOM" present some challenges and traps for those uninitiated.

It would be wise to establish some personal disciplines as you embark on PROFESSIONAL LIFE AT HOME. Yes you no longer need to commute to a workplace - now you just walk to your new work station and begin operations, but often it's not that easy!

• Resist the TRAPPINGS of other domestic activities at home


• Unusually at first your home is now your place of rest, recreation and WORK! - don't confuse these dynamics or you'll back to the RAT RACE before you know it!


• Be sure to PLAN your day and work through it just as you would if you leaving the home.


• Communicate your WORKPLACE PROTOCOLS to others at home so you can cooperatively blend professional and domestic responsibilities.


• Establish A DAILY MEHOD OF OPERATION - identify the business activities for each day, week and month.


• Establish a solid relationship with your Sponsor or others in the same or similar business dynamic and COMMUNICATE with them regularly.


• Recognise The FREEDOM of Working From Home and the ISOLATION of it - Ironically some people fail because they simply cannot perform efficiently in the absence of other people.


• Identify at what time your Professional activities conclude and re-enter your domestic existence. Many first time Home based entrepreneurs forget when to "TURN OFF" and compromise other parts of their life at home!

Goals, performance and productivity measurements are common place in most progressive organisations. These definitions set the performance direction and expectation for individuals and groups alike. Without these measurements there is no performance charter and little gets done. When little gets done, businesses quickly go broke!

Works from Home Entrepreneurs are encouraged to exercise the same disciplines. Establish a comprehensive Business Plan, Performance Resources and Performance Benchmarks.

Sure it can be a whole lot less formal than when you were back on the payroll - but without Disciplined Leadership, Planning, Resources and specific Performance goals, your new found freedom and home business enterprise could soon be on the slide!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Robson

How to Escape the Rat Race – Step 2

Destroy the debt!!!

Being in debt can be a massive anchor tugging you below the waterline with whoever it’s attached to struggling to keep their head above the water. Most people have some sort of non-mortgage debt, and a lot of people are paying more than 10% interest on this!

Being in debt is commonplace. In fact, in some cases is a necessity. Most people buy their cars with a car loan. Student often find themselves up to £20,000 in debt once they have finished university. However, leaving this unchecked can sink you.

Do not fear though. Clearing your debts may be easier than you think. Firstly, you need to make sure you are living below your means. See my step 1 post. Once you are living below your means list your non-mortgage debts with the interest rate you are paying alongside each, e.g.:

Car loan, 5%
Credit card, 19,9%
Store card, 28.9%
Overdraft, 9,9%

Now you are living below your means, use everything you have left at the end of the month to attack the debt with the largest interest rate (APR)! In this case, it’s the store card. Keep attacking it with your leftover money until you have paid it off. This may take several months, maybe even a year or more. But this step is ESSENTIAL in gaining financial freedom. You’ll never get ahead with huge debts weighing you down!

Once the store card is paid off, aim at the debt with the next highest interest rate – in our case, the credit card! You should now have more money to throw at this debt than you did the first because you no longer have to pay a hefty 28.9% APR from the store card! Keep at it, and soon you will have cleared this debt too!

Wow, two down, two to go. Overdraft – ready, aim, FIRE!! With the money you are now saving from not having to pay the credit card and store card you can fling all you have at this and before you know it, you’ll have killed this debt too.

Finally, aim at the car loan. You’ll kill this one off in no time.

This method is called Snowballing, because as you pay off the higher interest loans you have more and more money to throw at the other debts, and can reduce the time (and money) it’ll take to pay off each loan by many months, maybe even years.

Once you have shaken off the debts it show time – you can now really get cracking with becoming financially free!!