Darina Loakman.com

Well I’m afraid I don’t have a miracle cure, but I do use something that might help !

I originally talked about this over on Alice Seba’s blog when she asked me to contribute one of my favourite free tools. So I just thought I’d share it with you too

Like many of you who work from home, I have limited working hours each day and in order to make the most of them I do have to be very disciplined about what I actually do when I’m working

Sometimes I’m good at it, other times I’m not.

One of my biggest time stealers was answering emails and checking message forums. I also had a problem staying up too late at the computer and being wrecked the next day ! I would sit down supposedly for 5 minutes just on my way to bed, and 2 or 3 hours would pass before I knew it (can you relate to that?)

Plus my kids were fighting about who’s turn it was, and how long so and so had been on and it wasn’t fair !! you know the usual !

So earlier this year I took a few simple steps that have helped me to put more structure on my day and get the most out of my limited work time:

1. I outsourced most of my emails except those to my personal email address.

2. I put an autoresponder on my personal email address letting people know the times that I check my email and when I would get back to them.

3. I installed the free talking alarm clock from cinnamon software. I use it in a number of ways. Twice a day a little guy jumps up and tells me to answer my emails and check whatever message forums I use. Then later at night he jumps up again and tells me it’s bed time I also use him to restrict my kids time on the computer, but it’s not actually foolproof ! but so far when he jumps up and says “Hey your time is up, give your brother a go !” they seem to obey him.

I like the fact that it’s not just visual, the talking bit is what makes it work for me. We do tend to respond more to voice rather than just the written word and even if all I have to do is click the close button and he’s gone it still sticks in my mind what I have to do.

Here’s a short video on how it works and how to set it up.

You can download the talking alarm clock by clicking here.

Enjoy I hope it’s useful to you.

Darina