• 1. To document my mistakes as most of my hubs are designed to do, this is how I access my brain as I wrote in another hub called Hub Mirror (to shorten the long name).
• 2. To offer my "journal" entry into the HubPages community to hopefully help others to not make the same mistakes, or even better, to let them know if their doing it too and simply aren't aware of it and by reading my hub they become aware of why they feel the way they do in their home based employment/business.

After writing this hub I found that I'm proud of how this hub helped me to discover the problems associated with home based business/writer Life atrophy, I've discovered just what happened and how to prevent it from happening again. I hope it lends you some insights if you plan to enter into or are already in this exciting field of personal, professional, and creative freedom and higher income brackets!

If you have anything to add I would love to hear it (and I'm sure my fans would too who read this hub and find it useful).

We all aspire to work from home and make enough money to compensate us for our time and energy. Many people enjoy the very idea of not having a boss on them every second their "at work", or having someone with an unfair advantage over your work and ideas.

The dream to work at home is brilliant, its fun, it's liberating, and it is a very lucrative opportunity, because it allows you to fully expand your wings on your own terms.

All those times you thought/said my boss doesn't listen to me, I have great ideas that are wasted on him/her and so on and so forth; well home based business/employment is your opportunity to show your old boss who's truly boss right? Yes! er-

If you don't screw it up by losing insight into yourself, your responsibilities, and most importantly, your discipline.

This is a hidden problem with alot of people who start working for themselves but have no plan. I hope that I can save you from missing this insight because what's in this hub is often mistaken for failing, or people thinking they failed because this happened but the reality is it is not failure but a red flag to get a clue!

I spent 20 years trying to figure out "How" to get here but I spent very little time figuring out what I'd do when I got here. It's like grade school when I used to chase all those girls I liked.

Because I never caught them I didn't know what to do if I did, and when Amy turned around and stopped I was left staring at her in fear of what to do now. She kissed me and I ran. Knowing that if a girl turned around I'd be facing kissing her which at the time was "ewwwww" yes I was beaver on leave it to beaver and girls are crummy.

I find myself in this position now, I've chased the much wanted career, freedom, and independence that all those ads, scams, and infomercials have boasted about but thinking I'd never really catch it, here I stand ignorant of what to do with such an amazing gift. It's not really a gift as I did work hard to achieve it but you get the point.

In this hub I'm going to break down the blanket problem into phases and explain each one out with solution (most are obvious once you know the problem). The first phase was the base of the snowball effect of the others:

Phase I: Forgetting to switch from working class mindset to I'm my own boss Mindset

In my experience over the past 6 months I have to say It is/was everything I ever dreamed it would be- but then like a virus my lack of discipline, my laziness, my choosing not to get out of bed, my having no one to tell me otherwise so I didn't work when I simply didn't "want" to, started to really infect me in many ways.

The mistake I made was thinking that this was like my other job only with freedom. The reality of it is it's a completely different animal, one that starts out as a baby kitten then grows into a lion, and if I don't maintain discipline the lion will take me down.

The thing however about this is it is nothing like the girl who kissed me. It was gradual much like credit debt, only the credit is my "valuable time" and the debt is what I have to pay to have that valuable time any time I wanted, even before I earned the right to take a day week or hour off. I'm discovering that time is money and wasted time is- yes.

Wasted money. With nothing there to give me instant fear into my loss its not so easy to stay on task! Then at the end of the month when I had EVERY opportunity to EASILY make 3-4 grand and receive that paycheck for work surrendered and only see $1,043.00 vs. that first good check of $2173.00 that I once considered the "low" check because I could have made more... really hits home. For me I can barely get by on a thousand a month.

OMG They cut my hours at work! How can I live on this paycheck?!

The irony is when your at work and your hours get cut (even though you hate your job your focus is on the money not your time because you've accepted and adopted this reality) you get mad, and will set up a campaign with your bosses to get those hours back out of desperation (I have kids to feed, rent to pay etc...), be it working harder, asking for them, begging for them, etc.. etc.. etc... If you challenge their authority out of desperation they say:

You don't like it get a second job, or quit and work somewhere else!

You're powerless unless they decide to give you the hours back and thus let you earn a decent living.

So you did get another job (well I did in fact my home based business was the solution to rediculous things like the aforementioned, and it eventually took over my working anywhere but home in the end, thanks boss for the good advice hehe), one that would not limit you (in any way), one that would appreciate your hard work and compensate you for your time, energy, and intellectual properties.... freedom? Yes. If you earn the right to such freedom.

Then here we are working at home and nobody is stopping you from making as much as you can. You work harder, write more and money comes in, for me there is unlimited work. I even have people contacting me to do freelance articles for web marketing (articles on content not marketing but used for backlinks etc..) so the amount of work is beyond my capacity to do it.

When my check is cut its NOT because my "boss" is not willing to give me the hours due to business slowing down and company resources cutting back, NO ITS BECAUSE I CUT MY OWN HOURS!!!

My checks steady decline in wages is MY FAULT. A stark reality that lends a clue into what I'm doing wrong! I wonder why then I don't initiate a campaign with my boss (myself) to get those hours back??!!??!! (well this hub is said campaign but you get my point, and this came 4 months too late (but still fixable none the less).

The thing you start to realize is that that check is not just a redundant check like before, it is a check based on your work, you are not locked into a medial wage where you work harder and make the same money or work less and still make the same money.

Those days are gone, now you get paid for EXACTLY what you work for. Less work, less money. More work cha-ching! More money! I see it a lot like the rich/poor problem. You can't stay rich long even if you win the lottery unless you adopt the rich mental state, but someone rich can become poor in a few short weeks/months if they adopt the poverty/scarcity mind state.

In this hub I will take you through my experiences and bring you up to now about 6 months later and where I crash landed, yet my plane didn't explode, I haven't broken any bones and I sit in the cockpit with just minor injuries luckily a bit disoriented and feeling like crap but knowing how to get better (how's this for a metaphor of my situation?)... but if I don't change my ways I will end up back where I hated life- Working for a thankless boss!

I hope to lend my insight here to stop any of you from flying your plane to freedom without first reading the users manual so to speak. Although experience is the best teacher you don't necessarily have to experience what I did to learn the lessons I learned.

This article/hub will serve to show you some things I did when I reached my dream of working at home that screwed me out of most of the benefits of doing so! I hope if you reach your dream of working at home that you don't make the mistakes I did. Luckily I caught it before I completely crashed but I lost thousands of dollars in revenue because I was blinded by freedom and a bit selfish with my time.

The Disaster (that tapered in gradually like a tape worm sucking the life out of all my efforts)

The title of this hub is exactly the phrase that entered my mind when I was sitting on the couch watching another episode of I love Lucy, alone, with a big bag of starbursts besides me and a bunch of spent wrappers in front of it and I was too tired to get up and get a drink although I was dying of thirst.

I did talk myself into getting off the sofa to get that drink but as I opened the refrigerator pondering why I feel so crappy, so Non-ambitious, so lame, and constantly fighting an uphill battle with my own depression, the phrase "My home based employment has become my coffin" came to mind. Well not exactly like that, the actual phrase that made me stop and think was. "My beautiful environment and perfect job has become my coffin".

These questions re-entered my mind later in the day as I was watching "cribs" on Mtv and another show about the best castle mansions in the USA and my thought was that these beautiful homes were owned by people whom probably rarely ever saw them, enjoyed them and so forth because to make all that money they had to always be out there playing football or rapping at concerts or singing, or or or....

This brought me into phase two of awareness of the fact that I had slowly started to slack off. I would sleep longer hours work radical working hours i.e. get up at noon work till 5 sometimes work 10 minutes then take a break that lasts till midnight, work from midnight till 6 am then sleep till 3pm the next day and on and on it goes.

The irony is I got 8 hours of sleep every night, but I started to get more and more lazy, getting less and less work done, deadlines on blog/blurb/article projects started coming in late and bonuses stopped coming.

I was actually getting huge bonus checks for doing so well, producing so much work and doing such an amazing job (although my motivation ironically was to make more money these bonus checks were the checks I'd always wanted to get from my other jobs. Life was good but I was becoming less dependable, lazier and a great deal of things started to fall short of even average.

Phase II: Backing yourself into an atmospheric corner- The workhorse mentality becomes burned out mentality and before you know it you have no friends to call, nobody to talk to (in person) and nowhere to go.

You've become a hermit and lose all contrast that existed when you went to that thankless job. In this phase you start to realize the good things about going to that crappy job, because you now miss those aspects (even a few you thought you hated!)

It made me stop and ponder the question why my amazing home, a sanctuary that when people come to visit they can't stop talking about how charming it is, how amazing the back yard rock and waterfall pool etc.. is a place they never want to leave from...

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But when I look at all of this I feel trapped, I feel lonely, I feel negative... It's like I see how beautiful and amazing it is but I can't connect the reality with the emotions I felt when I first saw it. I started to realize that I look at this every day but I NEVER enjoy it! How could this be?

In reading over that paragraph I realize it's a matter of lacking contrast. When you don't ever leave an area you begin to get so accustomed to seeing it that it is no longer "new" or "exciting". Realize also that if you do spend a lot of time in the home but are distracted by say children, other people, guests and so on you are not spending a lot of time soaking in the environment as one would (like me) who was here alone 90% of the time and nothing to distract me but the TV.

You tend to over stimulate yourself by staring at your surroundings and this leads to waking trances where your looking but thinking about things like how lonely you feel, how bored you are and so on. Those emotions attach to thoughts and become linked to the environment. Next time someone yells at you take note of how you feel the next day when you see something you were looking at while being yelled at (anything in your environment).

Technically when you fight with someone THEY become the negatively associated object and "time" is only going to change that if they are nice to you for a time long enough to change that emotional association. If you simply don't talk to them it doesn't heal with time, it gets worse because every time you think of them you attach more negative thoughts to them iconically. This also happens with your home environment (which is why I mentioned this here).

The difference is when you go out and come home, talk on the phone or talk to someone about your day your changing the association you get when you look at things around you. Sure when your online looking at sites learning new things (i.e through reading hubs?) that is just one demension, when you go out and talk about things the fresh memories have 5 demensions (senses) of data associating which is pretty powerful.

Another thing to consider is that when you actually go out, spend all day at work or wherever, just not at home, home becomes the place you rarely see and thus maintains a fresh perspective. When your out also your acquiring new experiences, lessons, information spiritual growth etc etc but that changes how you view everything, how you see- you guessed it- your home.

When you spend all your time at home even if your mostly on the computer learning new things your not "experiencing" anything thus many dimensions of the information you acquire while your "out" are missing and those dormant senses that are not being updated, upgraded, morphed into- well anything new- just your home which is now boring, you start to lose perspective of your senses.

Memories begin to only work in one arena dominantly such as sight. Want to test this when you're bored? Spray an alien air freshener or light a scented candle and see how powerfully it sways your attention.

Want another way to think of it? Imagine yourself with a camcorder. Do you go after new things you haven't recorded yet or do you spend all your time recording the same thing.

Anyone who's watched a wedding tape knows that being there and watching the wedding on video are two completely different realities! So is life! Imagine your staying home all the time as running the camcorder all the time, only the true camcorder is your subconscious mind- under stimulated the play back is not exciting. We judge things in our life as exciting when it contrasts with something boring. When boring contrasts with boring theirs a boring redundant tape being created (so to speak).

I found this reality out when I decided to leave my house one day after 3 months of not leaving, (my roommate went grocery shopping and I just gave her money since we share all the food anyway) believe it or not I had forgotten what my front yard looked like! When I went out there the air was fresh, the grass was green, the landscaping was brilliant and fresh! I never spent too much time looking at it before anyway but wow, this day it was exciting (and that's a bit sad even though its naturally beautiful). I think I've made my point here.

_{Side bar:}

_{Depression, loneliness, tiredness, are all linked to your environment and eventually the reinforcement of these "negative" emotions make even paradise feel depressing...This is one reason it's not a good idea to spend all your time in one place i.e. at home, when you blend your work environment with your home environment this is a recipe for disaster.}

_{Part of the problem is that I live in the same room I work in. It seems like a good idea to write my blogs on my laptop in front of the television but in reality this dissolves the contrast wall between work and play... suddenly play is work! It feels like I never get off work, especially if I never go anywhere!}

_{What I discovered by the end of this hub was that all of this is tied to several factors of which contrast and association are just two keys on a big key ring of reasons I feel this way and that unlock the doors I can go through to return to where I want to be again. The first key I need to use is to stop "Enabling" myself to be too comfortable. It goes to show just because you can sit around and not earn money, doesn't mean you should!}

_{One thing i think work helped me with was discipline and staying on task. working for yourself is a true test of discipline! If you fail this test you end up wishing you were at work again!}

Phase III: Mental, physical, and Social Atrophy. In this phase you start to miss what you once had, like exercise, daily social interactions like at work (in my case all my social interactions were at work or with friends from work and since my life went to all work and no play online writing blogs, my friends started slowly becoming a memory).

You feel tired, non-ambitious, and wonder why your so dam broke all the time, yet your working harder than ever (rather you're running against the current so it just feels like your working harder but you're working LESS because you're burned out! This phase is what I call all work and no play made jack a basket case.

In order to maintain a good working and creativity balance you have to feed your mind and exercise your senses. Socializing is actually a very important part of being successful and maintaining a healthy creative streak... Balance is the key to surviving this phase differential.

Before working for myself I had all of the following things that I now DON'T have: (one thing I did get was a very mild case of agorophobia lol which feels like your eyes when you walk outside after being in a dark house and its very sunny)

I never leave the house. I don't have a life. I don't have a girl to love. I don't have peace with myself. I stopped expressing myself, socializing, enjoying life. All I do is sleep, watch television and work! The irony; The more I work the less I earn. I'm burned out from work, but also from being home, but I'm in a jam. I'm in a paradox for sure, but I think I figured out what's happening, why I'm here and how to get out.

_{Update: Since writing this hub 2 weeks ago I've made a 180 which I'll describe at the end of this hub)}

The thing is I rarely ever get depressed, (so this is a huge red flag) but since I've been living my dream, making more money at home than ever at a job, I've been on a steady decline in ambition, motivation, and following that decline comes my wages, my happiness, and my ability to feel "centered".

At a regular job you can get lazy and the worst you deal with is your nagging boss, the check is still the same.

When you work at home and your income is based on how many blogs, articles, and blurbs you can punch out (with no visible ceiling of work) then laziness is cancer to your paycheck!!!!! (of course this is MY job your's may be based on something else but the concept is the same: work = pay)

What the heck happened? Why is this happening to me? (first of all it's not happening TO me its happening BECAUSE OF ME/My lack of action).

How can I have everything I've chased for 20 years and yet feel so empty, so lost, so broke? How can I have all the things I thought would liberate me from the prison of a job and yet feel MORE imprisoned now?

It's funny the questions you ask about when your in this predicament are far different from the ones you asked before that got you out of hell job into home based riches job... Was it worth it to give up a guaranteed paycheck that came with some nagging for a higher potential, more free, position that allows me to answer only to myself? What did I give up? What did I gain? You mean I have to now be responsible COMPLETELY for my earnings? my livelihood? my actions? Wow.

But although at first you must learn (often the hard way as I'm doing) that with great power comes great responsibility, once you figure out how the game is played the home based employment is the winning hand, if your man or woman enough to learn how to be your boss, your employee, your life coach, and your discipline all at the same time!

These are questions going through my head every day now, like a routine I go through them trying to figure out how I made this happen. I don't kid myself, I don't make excuses, I face the music, I know I did this and yet I also know I can return to the first months where everything was perfect again simply by figuring out where the road forked and I took the wrong path.

Phase IV: All those Dr. Phil insights now make sense in a very real way, you start to listen more and if your smart read the Life strategies book to get a clue of how you gave your power away. Most of these phases apply more to a single person more than someone in a family situation as often family members will be the first to say HEY your being lazy!

One reality stuck with me and thank god it did. It is a simple quote that brings enormous insight into the solution. "If you always do what you've always done, you will continue to get what you've always gotten" This means that my situation is based on doing something different (new path i.e. laziness and irresponsible life style); hence to change my circumstances I have to change what I'm doing.

My hell is based on something I'm doing to invite these circumstances (thank you Dr. Phil for this insight- Best book ever written: Life strategies, my copy has been referred to so many times it looks as used as a preachers bible!)

I know what this looks like, but no I'm not getting a kick back from Dr. Phil, I genuinely enjoy his books (although at first i thought his attitude was a bit cold I come to realize that he just skips the cookies and milk approach that people don't listen to anyway and say's look heres the problem heres the solution- wake up!).

The life strategies book and those ten life laws continue to be useful to me. No matter what happens in my life, how lost I become or how strange my situation starts to feel, I read that book over 3 days and I figure it out. The thing is usually the problem is I'm breaking one or more of the "life laws" and when I read the book I often can figure out which one it is. At this point I don't read the whole book over again I just refer to the following list (below this text block) on the back of the book and I can see right away which law I'm breaking and I re-read that particular chapter(s). I then write a hub and solve the problem (and help others do the same).

I don't care if the man made the principals up or consolidated them from other authors, the book (and a few others like self matters) works bottom line. It's the frikken psychological roadmap to owning your life.

I would even go so far as to say that I think he derived these ten life laws from the ten commandments converting them into real life, modern templates for happiness. In the bible the tend commandments are trying to accomplish the same thing. It's not about punishment for breaking a commandment its about breaking a commandment is breaking a natural law in the same way that jumping off a cliff breaks the law of safety.

Their are consequences to breaking commandments- not becuase the bible or god says so but because the commandments are simply the recipies to harmony with the laws of physics and mental health, and everything else! If you've memorized the ten commandments but can't seem to stop breaking them (thou shall not lie, which includes TO YOURSELF? lol) Then get this book and read in plain english what the consequences are of doing so.

Read the ten life laws below to see what I mean (the book is broken into 10 chapters each one about 15 pages on each law, good stuff).

When you start to feel lazy, tired, lose all your ambition and your checks barely pay your bills with anything left over for yourself, things start to really hit home. You start saying things to yourself like, "I have to do something about this" "I'm wasting away my opportunity here" "How did I get here in no mans land?"

This is where I am (well was when I wrote this hub). The irony is in writing this hub I saw myself completely. Writing things down is very therapeutic because it puts everything outside yourself to see, to map out, to tackle with solutions. Your eyes alone are taking in billions of bits per second of data, that's not including the other senses, how much bandwidth do you really think is left for thinking clearly?

Writing things down puts them into a static and unchangeable (thus in a format that cannot be dissolved simply by changing your interests of thoughts or being distracted) format that you can visit externally. This is why a journal is so valuable. It forces you to write down your day and thus you go over it, record it and can even revisit it later in another state of mind and see where you made mistakes, thus figure out patterns to behavior (yours)!

The first thing I want to offer you as a solution if your where I am is to write down your thoughts in as much detail as possible. Exhaust your every thought onto paper (digital or otherwise). This gives you something to use in your "investigation" of who murdered, and how, your social life, your potential earnings, etc..

You'd be surprised how much insight you get from outsight :) Your thoughts are constantly trying to justify things you don't like about yourself; this is a recipe for disaster. When you write these thoughts down honestly (don't write down justification just write down what your thinking) and read it back your reading it as facts not something that can be justified.

Although I should mention if you do write down the justifications then when you go back and read it a few days later you will see that your justifications didn't hold water and realize that these justifications you make are time stamped and change as situations allow. (justification thought forms are like camellias' they change colors to blend in with the thought stream background but as benign as they look they are very dangerous to your ambition!

This may help you realize or become aware of how dangerous it is to just let thoughts flow for your goals instead of writing them down!

Writing things down puts your goals "in writing" like a contract. It solidifies it and allows you to categorize the problems.(and to see the justifications so you can remove them and get to the core truths) When I look back on this hub (my thoughts written down, and by the way writing a hub weather or not you publish it publically or just keep it for yourself is a great way to do this) I see that I was lazy, not working, watching wayyy too much television, not leaving the house and so on.

I did realize all these things but I was constantly justifying it as I drowned those uncomfortable realities in the discovery channel, and television programs that allowed me a temporary escape (Tyler Perry's house of pain, yes dear, discovery channel, history channel, the list is exhausting).

• Not taking enough time for yourself

All work and no play makes Jack a basket case. This is resolved with all of the above. I worked 3 solid months every day 18 hours a day and became a complete basket case, lost revenue (thousands) and more.

• Too many shortcuts

Shortcuts are ok once in a while but when your idea of a shower is washing your hair and getting out, forgetting to brush your teeth until bed time, and combing your hair once a week (because you don't leave the house) then your being lazy and will suffer repercussions. (I didn't do this but I've seen people do this, its disgusting!)

If you do something you should do it to the best of your ability. Take showers every day, shave every day (guys) well every other day at least, brush teeth every day, brush hair every day, GET DRESSED EVERY MORNING- don't slum it half the day then get dressed when you want to leave the house.

Don't even slum it more than an hour after you wake up, make it a practice to get up shower, get dressed, do your hair, shave etc.. as if you were going to a job interview. I'm guilty of this and what I did was when I woke up I had my cell phone programmed to go off (alarm) using an mp3 I made to remind me to get dressed (dressed up rather).

I clipped a bunch of songs together for it so I knew what it meant but if anyone (roomates?) were there they'd just hear the song. Another thing I did was incorporated my roomate into the mix asking her to tease me if my alarm went off and I was still slumming it in sweats. (nothing wrong with sweats but they tend to make you feel lazy, too relaxed, you can't wear during work hours what you wear during relaxation time, the mind knows the difference and will give you energy accordingly!)

If you need motivation get out your digital camera and take a picture every morning of yourself after you wake up (use a big mirror).

I used this trick until I got in the habit, don't laugh it works. What I'd do is get up get dressed, showered, suit up (you don't have to wear a suit at home but look as nice as you can in whatever you wear. If you wear weekend or play clothes you won't be as productive, your mind clicks with your dressing style so wearing clothes for office work is definately a plus for productivity and staying in work mode trust me) Then I'd post that picture to myspace where I knew everyone I knew would see it every day.

Knowing that people were going to see it I made sure to look nice. This helps you feel successful trust me, it affects you drastically. When you are working then pass a mirror (usually for me this is the bathroom mirror) and see yourself looking nice your self esteem and pride take a front seat! You actually forget (your too busy feeling good and working) how you look and when you see yourself you feel great!

• Laziness: Stop incubating it. Don't give into your freedom at every chance. Make a schedule and stick to it just like any other job. No sleeping in 7 days a week, GET UP. Take a shower every morning, shave, don't put these things off. They will stack up and you will end up never shaving until you have a beard, or your legs are more hairy than a guys. Maintain a strict work routine. Don't take breaks as often as you'd like, suck it up and work as if you may get fired if you don't. If you take breaks just because you can you will build a habit of wanting to take breaks more, your discipline will fade and you will become lazy (in all of your life).
• Don't work where you play or play where you work. If your job is writing online, marketing online etc.. don't use your computer for socializing. If you must do this DON'T DO IT DURING WORK HOURS. You will develop the habit of having too much fun at work and work won't get done. Money will slip away and all of a sudden you will realize your social life is costing you 2,000.00 a month just to chat in Yahoo or write hubs on HubPages (which doesn't earn you enough to justify your time).

Writing hubs doesn't make you rich or even enough to live on so write them on your FREE time, not during work hours!!! If you can maintain a work discipline chatting once in a while in yahoo is fine but if you find yourself chatting too much you have to turn it off so you can get work done. Remember work = money and chat = taking away your money.

If you have no problem paying 50.00 an hour (or whatever your comparable wage for your work is) to talk to your homies then that's fine, but realize although Yahoo unlike a cell phone doesn't charge you per minute to use it, talking to your homies during working hours costs you money PER MINUTE.

THE LAZY TAX

To find out how much that conversation costs you figure out based on a 9 hour day (with 2/15 minute breaks and an hour lunch = 8 hours work) how much you make per hour average. I'll use my actual time as an example, realize the more you can make per hour the more expensive those conversations are!

Let's take my potential if I work work work, no chat chat chat, hub, hub, hub.

$2,000.00 which is 100 blogs a day or 12.5 per hour 8 hours a day 5 days a week. This is based on an 8 hour work day, with one hour of lunch and two 15 minute breaks = 30 minutes so 9.5 hours scheduled. Let's put me on a work schedule of monday through friday 7:30am - 5:00pm.

Based on this an average day is 9.5 hours(8 working/earning hours) /100 blogs = 100.00 a day

100.00 - taxes of about 23% = 100 - 23 = $77.00 take home (you can get tax breaks but let's keep this basic)

From this we've deducted that a days wage is worth 77.00 divide that by the 8 hours of work and I take home: 9.625 or 9.63 per hour apx.

My base earnings are I'll say 9.60 per hour

If I chat for an hour that chat is costing me (during work hours not lunch/breaks/after work hours) 9.60 per hour. .16 (16 cents) per minute or roughly 3 cents per second. I earn 3 cents per second essentially in this scenario.

so if I chat 10 minutes I'm supposed to be working I am paying a dollar sixty for that chat. This doesn't seem like alot but compared to free its alot and when you add up all your chatting during working hours you could end up paying hundreds in chat fees!

Now you know why your boss is so "touchy" when you waste time! You have to take on your bosses perspective here and become aware of what your time is worth! the more you calculate this the more you realize how much money your spending instead of earning it during working hours thus how much money you can get back by changing your work environment rules.

I discovered (your yahoo can clock your chats and times so you can actually go back through your recorded chat logs and figure out how much time you chatted that month and at what times (hence differentiate working hour chats from off work or break chats (you should document/clock out/in your work breaks for this reason).

I was shocked at what I discovered.

Potential monthly earnings: $2,000 - taxes is: $1540.00 take home

Last month I earned $1,086 - taxes = $836.00

Now I could just subtract $1540.00 from $836 = $704.00

I can see that I lost 704.00 collectively in wasting time hence whatever I did to waste that time be it writing HubPages or chatting, watching television etc.. I've paid $704.00 on it. How then can I justify budgeting any money to go to the movies, out to dinner etc from my paycheck when I spent over 700.00 this month on entertainment? Do you see where the reality sets in here (and why your boss is so touchy about you not working or working harder?)

Part of gaining that discipline for working not screwing around or watching television is knowing everything above in your own numbers! That is just based on my lowball figures. If I include the other 1,000 I could have made if I manned up then I blew 1,704.00 on entertainment. I call it the lazy tax

• No Fear of losing your Job.

Just because your boss is not there threatening to fire you doesn't mean you don't need that fear. Fear makes us do things and motivates us to stay on task. You need to generate that fear in other ways and one way is through discipline.

Using the above break down of your time money equation (and other things) you need to generate that fear in place of your boss in a constructive way (as your boss did in some ways).

The bosses motivation besides himself getting fired was budgeting. For you to be a profitable addition to the company you work for you have to earn enough money for the company to pay you and to sustain a profit to the company.

You should become that boss in that way and realize that time is money during working hours, and any time your not producing your costing yourself money or to put it another way your spending it before you earn it. With some practice and awareness of how much money that time is worth you will soon start to see like a boss does and you'll know that a 2 hour movie costs you (in my case 19.00 which is more than going out to watch a movie AFTER WORK!) money. Depending on how much money your work generates that 2 hour movie could cost you a fortune (that's motivation to watch it during the matinee like after work right?)

You have to set goals for your work schedule and how much you can and will make that month because this quantifies the amount of money your losing. If you have no goals and just say I'll make as much as I can you can't quantify how much time your wasting or how much money that time is worth thus no fear of losing something. It is essential to know what your time is worth and to be well aware of how much money anything you do during working hours (or if you clock out early, take an extended lunch etc..) will cost you in revenue!

If your planning to become your own boss it is probably a very good idea to not just jump into it without being a boss over someone else first. I worked at Wal*Mart for a year managing a team. I spent a great deal of my time figuring out management, its the real reason I was there (the job sucks, the pay sucks, and you get no respect, actually the opposite, even if you do exactly what they want!). I learned how to quantify time, budgets etc.. and this is very good experience for home based discipline :)

• No respect

When you start working for yourself you are often in a deep seated need to feel free, liberated from the turmoil's of working elsewhere. It is natural to want this and at first you will definitely indulge- and you should- but not to the point of obsession.

You must treat your home work environment with the same respect as you did your job. You wouldn't show up to work in slippers and pajama's, a shirt and sweats, or uncombed hair, not taking a shower, not eating breakfast, and so forth- so you shouldn't do these things at home (during working hours) either.

You should get up at a specific time, have a warm up routine of no more than 30 minutes (this is 30 minutes into your work day not before, showering and all that come before work) and get all your ducks in a row.

You should also have a "get ready for work" routine that is about an hour long. You should get dressed as if your meeting with your boss (because you are- YOU) and with yourself as your boss don't you deserve to be respected with the proper attire, beautiful hair(girls), shaved appearance (guys), teeth brushed, showered, dressed to kill, and ready to go (coffee? breakfast? smile?).

Although you don't have to do these things they will definitely affect you psychologically if you don't. They will make you lazy, unproductive, and careless. Once in a while is fine (to slack) but you must adhere to a work environment at all costs! The way I gauge it is I should be ready to go on a hot date any time during my work environment hours. If someone calls for a meeting you shouldn't have to take more than a minute or two to get ready (usually brush teeth and gargle mouthwash and spruce up hair). You should be video conference ready at all times.

Appearance affects work ethic, motivation, and self esteem (even if your alone because you do after all pass the mirror and reflective surfaces as you go to the bathroom or get into your car right?)

If there is anyone you should respect the most it is yourself. You should do all the things you'd do for your boss, co-workers and business clients for yourself first, its a matter of self respect, psychological prowess, ambition, and all of those things make you a better tool to help others, get work done etc...

You have to be razor sharp in home based business. Remember your new found freedom should not be your coffin nails. You can still attain a great zest of freedom without having to slack off.

If you think about it we often like the work environment- it has a wonderful discipline use- its often the bad mannered bosses, the lack of appreciation, the lack of being able to earn more, lack of control over your ability to be successful, propagate your ideas into lucrative channels and so on that we hate about working for others.

You must retain the disciplined environment including the dressing up for work part, but realize that if you don't you will lose MORE freedom working for yourself and your income will severely suffer. If you retain the environment but upgrade all the rest (appreciate yourself/work, higher earning potential, hard work gets appreciated (by seeing more money and happy clients), ideas get to make an impression and more money, and so on.

Freedom should be a BETTER work environment, not a lazy useless one. Don't associate discipline of the old job as the bad thing, the thing to run from, it is a core component even if you work for yourself, and it exists in business for a lot of reasons, including discipline, productivity, and profit potential- happiness.

• No Exercise

This is often job specific. Working at home is often working online, writer, marketer, and so on. If your home based employment has you sitting at a computer all day and you don't interact with others socially (I'm talking about in person- even family members count as socially where as talking to your buddy in India over Yahoo messenger does not) then their are two areas you're neglecting to get that are very important to your success.

At first the social aspect is not apparent. If you get out that's good, if you don't (like me) then your neglecting yourself of interpersonal social stimulation that will generate all kinds of problems. First of all social interaction helps you be more creative as your talking a lot, playing a lot, and getting new information all the time in conversations.

Social interaction can make the work day less strenuous (don't think stress or frustration will never be a part of your home work environment) and it adds comic relief. If you don't get social interaction (offline) you may not be providing yourself enough contrast to make sitting at that computer all day exciting! The computer will become a prison trust me.

Social interaction exercises many of your senses as well as gets your heart pumping and your body moving around. You actually move less even with your hands when you're by yourself.

The second component is exercise as in stimulating the body, the heart, blood, and muscles, joints and so forth. If you don't get enough exercise you will start to get tired a lot, your muscles will require more work to move them. For me my fingers were the only thing stimulated other than my legs when I got up to move from the computer to the couch! Standing up in the shower even became tiresome!

If you work at home and have no exercise or social interaction you need to join a social group such as meetup.com to get out constantly and have fun, it is required to keep you at the top of your game. You should generate an exercise routine, even just walking around your block once a day is exercise.

Get up and clean your house before working (nothing strenuous just something to mimic working at a job) to motivate yourself and move your body around. If you wake up and plop down in front of the television your body takes longer to wake up because your not doing anything you didn't do asleep! If you feel like crap move around you'd be surprised!

Joining a gym is really good exercise and a good workout keeps your body on top of its game as well. Where your body is your mind follows! (Same in reverse). Just because your job only requires your fingers (typing) and your mind (production of work) doesn't mean you don't need the body to be in good shape. If your body becomes tired, worn out, atrophy in the muscles, then your mind will soon follow this pattern and motivation to work disappears!

On your lunch or breaks or before work, even after do something active. Go bowling, skating, jump on a trampoline, play tennis, anything that gets you moving and the heart beating fast (sex is a good one too especially before work *smiles*).

• Bad diet

This is something you deal with in both cases (working for others or for yourself) however working at home we tend to cook less, eat fast food like frozen burritos, left over's, etc. Especially if you get lazy because of all of the above, then you are too tired to cook and will eat a lot of processed food and coffee, soda and things that just crash you worse! If you're getting out and exercising in some way chances of this happening are less however. Social interaction and hobbies like tennis or walking/power walking etc... Usually make you hungry and you may eat better.

For me a rule of thumb is if I'm too lazy to cook at least once in a while a full balanced meal then I'm breaking the aforementioned rules and thus am unproductive.

• Unproductive Environment

There is a lot of things that should be taken into consideration here.

Before:

When I wake up I wake up to a messy room, I keep saying I'll clean it but rarely is it ever clean. It's an eyesore and mind sore as I'll explain in a minute. My kitchen has a few dishes always in the sink (not the same ones mind you) and I have to take the garbage out every morning because it stinks up the place :).

When I get into my car to go somewhere it is twice the mess my room is. I wake up tired so I don't take a shower right away (I don't have to now do I?). I wear my shirt to bed and wake up wearing it and throw on a pair of sweats. I'm exhausted and nothing about my room, home or car motivates me to feel otherwise.

This is a recipe for laziness wrapped in a laziness wrapper.

Your environment is a training ground for your mental state and your mental state determines how motivated you get, how quickly you wake up, what state you wake up in (happy or grumpy tired or energized).

You should always keep your environment in "visitor" status or as my brother calls it "pimp" status. Your room should be cleaned the night before you sleep (if it is done every day it will be 2 minutes to cleaning usually putting clothing in a hamper or something). You house Should also be cleaned at the end of the day, nothing out of place, nothing hanging about, no dishes in the sink, clean your car and keep it clean, get into the habit of putting your dirty clothes in a closed hamper (blocking smell).

This prepares your morning for ease. Ironically you have less to do to wake up but mentally you wake up feeling unblocked, feeling wonderful, you wake up energetic, and not confused (the busy environments or dirty room trigger a lot of thoughts and dirty room starts negative thoughts).

When your room, house, car and kitchen are all immaculate, your desk is cleaned and organized (and simple no hundred cartoon characters all over it, and bills, papers etc.. keep it very simple and all other stuff hidden!) including your computers desktop screen.

If your desktop is like mind and accumulates a gig of crap on it daily then generate a folder to shove everything in nightly. Name it desktop "Sept 22 08" or whatever day that is then shove that folder into a master folder of all of your daily desktop folders. Put your icons in a folder.

The idea is to have the least amount of things on your desktop as possible. This helps the mind trust me. The background picture should be something that makes you feel good, and not too busy. You should change the background picture to keep it fresh too this helps a lot with creativity.

When you wake up in the morning you should ALWAYS make your bed well. Make your room look immaculate when you leave it. The very act of making your bed trains you for your day. You have to move around to do it, you have to think about it, and when its done your mind contemplates the conversion from mess to finesse. When you leave the room your mind is on track for productivity and the room is clean.

Just knowing your room is dirty not even seeing it after you leave it puts stress on your mind! Making your bed is like sweeping off the porch. I call this the "Open Door" room because when my rooms clean I can leave my door open, if its dirty I close the door so my roommate doesn't think I'm a pig! (I told her this to motivate me to clean my room as a closed door is a bad thing :)

• Not making enough new connections

Every day you work you should try to get at least one new connection for your business. They say you should always have a full network of friends in any area of life. You should network with at least one doctor, one dentist, one writer, one millionaire etc..

This becomes useful when you find yourself wanting to complete something, needing doctors advice (doctor FRIENDS are more willing to give you the real story than a doctor who doesn't know you from jack), or wanting to get connected in some way. Say you write a powerful new eBook, wouldn't it be easier to market it if your buddy, an internet marketer were to help you get it out there? Show you where and what to do? Possibly use HIS/HER resources? Networking is powerful you need it.

You should set up a database of these people and most importantly keep in contact in some VALUABLE way with all of them. Don't just be their acquaintance. One reason the rich have so many "social" parties is they are keeping their connections fresh and available. They all know about this but they all realize the power of networking (one hand washes the other so to speak).

In time you will realize how many things YOU can offer each one of them and when they need something you can help them (get them to come to you too! become a valuable resource to them and when they need you the law of reciprocation kicks in. Don't just keep it business either, keep it friendship. When you are an island trying to accomplish things you will find that you work 100x harder than one who has a network. This makes it hard to be successful thus makes it easy to lose ambition. Plant seeds every day and even if you lose one you gain another!

Cease the opportunities to add a new person to your network! You do this by doing THEM a favor first and thus become valuable!

Due to time constraints I had to leave the last part with very little pictures, I hope that this information however was interesting and useful enough to warrant your attention anyway :)

I have since taken all my own advice in this hub and made an amazing change in how I do things. It makes a TREMENDOUS difference, and until I wrote this hub one day when I was dissatisfied with my life, my current lack of ambition etc.. I didn't even realize why it was happening. When I wrote this hub I was breaking every rule I wrote about in here!

The power of HubPage writing is clear in this hub (to me and hopefully to you) because in writing it I was able to take my own advice (not just think it and justify it away). I read the hub 5 times and started getting a clue. We can often advise others with surgical precision but when it comes to advising ourselves we know the rules and how to break them and thus its much harder especially since were emotionally involved in our own life.

When you write it down and read it (several times to push those justifications away) you can then take the advice. I'm amazed at how much changed when I just applied the principals in this hub, principals I'd often applied in the past but lost track of over time due to simple laziness.

I hope it gives you insight. Many of the things I discussed here are detailed more in other hubs. One example is the planting seeds (network building) concept (linked to a few paragraphs up). I would love to hear your comments on this hub and I would gladly answer any questions you may have. I wanted to put more in this hub but time simply is not on my side (free time and all lol)..

I must get to work, I've made amazing strides in revenue earning since I wrote this, in fact I'm writing this last capsule today 3 days after I finished the last pieces of the hub. It's been a month since I started it and I thought I should put it up before it gets so long nobody could possibly read it all, or they start calling me winded in the forums again haha... (I've been reinstated whoohooo!)

Have a HubTacular day!

Jerrico Usher