Life sometimes gets in the way of business. Financial difficulties, family challenges and health concerns can all distract you from your business, yet business must go on. So how do you set your challenges and concerns aside and stay motivated and focused during difficult times?

#1 Create Goals

Goals help you stay focused and motivated. The trick during difficult times is to make sure the goals are easily attainable yet still move your business forward. For example, if you are dealing with health problems then you may prefer to break your day up into smaller segments. A goal such as creating an information product or writing your content for the next month is something you can tackle in small sections of time.

However, launching a new website may not be something you want to tackle when you are under the weather. Also, while outsourcing to contractors can definitely ease some of the burden, if you have to micromanage the contractors, you are creating too much work for yourself. Find contractors that can take the project and run with it. At the same time, choose goals that you can tackle easily in smaller segments of time.

#2 Work on What You Love

Ideally, everything you do for your business is something you enjoy. However, many business owners still manage some tasks that are not their favorite responsibilities. When you are dealing with a difficult time, it’s the perfect time to find someone to manage those tasks and to focus your attention on doing the tasks you love.

For example, if you love to blog and communicate with your audience, then set aside time each day to manage that responsibility. Having something to look forward to will help you get through the difficult times without your business suffering.

#3 Cut Yourself Some Slack

If you put too much pressure on yourself to do and be a superhuman, you are going to burn out quickly. Everyone has difficult times. If you accept that you may have to cut back a bit or get help during this trial, you will be much more able to focus on your business when you have time to. Stress and pressure are a guaranteed way to lose focus and concentration.

#4 Change Your Schedule

Often, difficult times throw a wrench in your routine. Suddenly you are not able to work when you normally do. This can make concentrating and focusing difficult. Instead of struggling to try to maintain the same schedule, create a new one. Adapt and be proactive. For example, a sick family member can consume your day. Instead of struggling, get up an hour earlier or stay up an hour later during the day. Create time to work so you don’t have to find time to work.

#5 Mind Your Health

Above everything else, it is important to take good care of yourself, especially during difficult times. Manage stress, get good sleep, exercise, move your body and eat healthy foods. These will all help you focus and concentrate when you have time to work on your business.

Planning ahead for difficult times can also lessen the impact. Make sure you have a good support system. Also a savings account that can provide you with several months of income can also lessen the stress during difficult times. Outsource, automate, and remember how important it is to take great care of yourself.

People who have clear, strong goals are far more likely to succeed than those who don’t. In fact, Harvard University once did a study where they surveyed a class of students for goals and ten years later found that the two percent of individuals with written goals had a higher net worth than the other ninety-eight percent combined.

Once you know what you want in your business, these are three smart ways to get you closer to achieving your goals:

Befriend Like-Minded People

Join organizations such as the Entrepreneurs Organization, Toastmasters and Business Networking International. Seek out people who are developing the same skills as you or aiming for the same goals as you. Share ideas and ambitions. Success is impossible to achieve alone. Behind every major success story is a brilliant team of people. Bill Gates once said: “If you took away our top 25 people, Microsoft would be a mediocre company.” Surround yourself with A-class players, whether they are colleagues, employees, business partners or friends.

Have Strong Metric-Based Goals

It is easy to fool yourself into thinking you are making more progress than you actually are. You could be reading a lot of books, building a lot of websites or making a lot of plans and somehow feel as though you are making progress, when you are actually not. Having strong, metric-based goals will help keep you on track towards your goals. These metrics should be easy to measure and have a direct impact on your bottom line.

Make sure your metrics are rooted in time as well. For example, “build a great business” is a poor goal to shoot for. On the other hand, “be making $10,000 a month after tax in 12 months” is a great, concrete goal.

Learn from Those Who’ve Done It, without Falling into the Guru Trap

In order to reach your business goals, it is crucial to study and learn from other people’s past successes and failures. If you want to make money in real estate, study Donald Trump. If you want earn money investing/trading, study Warren Buffett or George Soros, and so on and so forth.

The key with learning from others is to get as much knowledge from as many people as possible. Avoid falling into the “guru trap.” The guru trap comes primarily from very good speakers or marketers who convincingly promise to have all the answers. People who believe them end up following only one school of thought or method, believing it is “the answer”.

Unfortunately, real success rarely comes from following gurus. Instead, real success comes from absorbing knowledge from many different sources, then forming your own ideas and conclusions. Having strong business goals is a key ingredient to success. Surround yourself with others who also share similar ambitions, set measurable goals rooted in time, and learn from a wide range of people.

Working from home is full of challenges. Not only do you have to motivate yourself, you also want to make sure your time is well spent. This means eliminating time wasters so you can spend your day being productive and ultimately profitable.

Many working day time wasters are obvious – for example watching television while you’re trying to work just isn’t productive. However, other time wasters are less conspicuous. Being aware of these time wasters will help you create a more productive working day.

Time Waster #1 – Email

You may think that you must stay on top of your email so you can stay on top of your business. While it is important to make sure your customers, prospects and business partners are responded to, you don’t need to respond to them immediately and you don’t need to be the person to respond.

Email is a fantastic task to outsource and automate. Autoresponders, customer service ticket systems and FAQ pages can all help reduce the amount of customer email you receive. If you have to be the one to manage your email, create a disciplined routine where you check your email only once, twice maximum, each day. And schedule it during a time when you are generally not productive.

Time Waster #2 – Disorganization

How much time do you spend each day looking for things? Each minute you spend sorting, shuffling and searching is wasted time. The solution is to create one central location for your work. The more organized you are, the less time you will waste getting prepared to work.

Time Waster #3 – Social Networking

Social networking may be your most effective marketing tactic; however, it doesn’t need to consume your day. Like email, social networking is something that can be outsourced, automated, and scheduled.

Create a plan that outlines what you want to achieve with your social networking efforts. Then create a plan that supports your goals. Next, look to your resources to make it happen. Find post scheduling plug-ins and widgets. Hire a contractor to manage your social networking tasks. And if you must manage it yourself, then schedule it into your day. Whatever you do, don’t open Facebook at the beginning of the day and keep it open throughout the day.

Of course each person has their own unique time wasters. These are simply the most common. Spend a week tracking what you do each day. Literally keep a notebook and a pencil next to you and track what you do and how long you do it. This will give you a good idea about how you spend your time.

There seems to come a time during every business owner’s day when their concentration and ability to focus falters. For many, that low concentration time coincides with a midday dip in energy. Others have a difficult time getting started. And of course some struggle to concentrate all day long. Let’s explore some tried and true strategies to improve your concentration during a working day.

#1 Coffee or Tea – But Not Too Much

The morning coffee habit does more than wake you up; the caffeine will also help you to concentrate on your morning work. However, too much caffeine can make it more difficult to concentrate. Instead you feel jittery, anxious and a bit too energetic. You may need to test to determine how much caffeine is right for you. And of course if you don’t like coffee, tea offers a bit of caffeine, too.

Take care to not drink caffeine in the afternoon. While you may get a burst of energy and an ability to concentrate, you may also not sleep well that night. Caffeine consumed later in the day can affect your ability to fall and stay asleep. A poor night’s sleep will do nothing to help your ability to concentrate the following day.

#2 Exercise Regularly

Exercise stimulates blood flow. It also releases hormones that can help you stay energetic, focused and productive. When you exercise doesn’t matter as much as making sure you get regular exercise. Many experts recommend exercising first thing in the morning for lasting energy and focus. However, if your morning is normally your most productive time of the day, then this strategy doesn’t make sense.

It may make more sense to exercise when your energy and ability to concentrate begin to wane. For example, if you normally experience an energy dip in the afternoon, that may be the perfect time to exercise. And the good news is that exercise doesn’t mean you have to run five miles to receive the health and concentration benefits. Walk for ten or twenty minutes and you will feel refreshed and renewed.

#3 Watch What You Eat

You already know that the food you eat affects your health. It also affects your ability to concentrate. Consider conducting an experiment. Spend two or three days eating foods that do not support good concentration, such as foods that are high on the glycemic index, meaning they are high in sugar and refined carbohydrates. They burn quickly in your body and cause your blood sugar to spike and subsequently plummet. Journal how you feel during those first two or three experimental days.

Next, spend two or three days eating fruits, vegetables, lean protein and complex carbohydrates. Don’t’ eat any junk food at all. Journal how your day differs. Chances are you will feel much more effective, productive and focused. Food has a very real effect on your ability to concentrate.

#4 Other Ideas

Other ways to improve your concentration during your workday include:

* Getting a good night’s sleep

* Maintaining a clean, clutter-free office

* Creating a daily task list and check items off as you go along

* Prioritizing tasks and working on one task at a time

* Taking frequent breaks – stretch and move your body during these breaks

The more you are able to focus, the more productive your working day will be. Productive days mean more profits and more satisfaction at work. Daily habits can make a world of difference.

Your home office makes a big difference to your productivity. A cluttered, poorly organized home office causes a lot of wasted time and lack of inspiration. A well-organized home office, designed to facilitate work, will instead boost your energy, concentration and even inspiration levels. Here are a few quick and easy strategies for organizing your home office.

Put Everything You Need within Reach

The goal of having a well-organized home office is to facilitate productive states with little to no interruptions.

If you have to leave your chair to get something or turn something on or off every ten minutes, it is very difficult to get into a good workflow.

Telephones

Have your landline telephone on or near your desk. If you have a handheld phone, your phone’s base should ideally be near your desk; when you need to concentrate, it often helps to be able to completely disconnect your phone. Your cell phone charger should also be on or near your desk so that you may use it without having to get up.

Files and Other Resources

Have all your files organized in an easy to use manner. The way you organize them is really up to you. Some people prefer to organize files by subject, others by alphabet, still others by the chronological order in which they will need the files. Try out a few different ways of organizing your files. Invest in a labeler instead of writing labels by hand; it makes a difference and allows you to re-label files quickly and easily without making a mess.

Inbox

Almost every corporate employee has an inbox. Many successful work-from-home entrepreneurs recommend having one for your home office. An inbox is a physical box that sits on your desk, with various papers in it that you need to process later. If you write a phone number on a scrap piece of paper, you can just toss it in the inbox instead of having to create a new contact right immediately. The same is true for receipts. Just about anything that can be processed later can be tossed into the inbox instead of being done immediately, which helps avoid interruptions from small menial tasks.

Clean Your Office Once a Week

At least once a week, clean your office. Clear off the desk, organize the files and clear your inbox.  So many home-based entrepreneurs let too many items pile up. It may not seem to be a big deal at first, but in a few weeks or months, so many things get piled up that it becomes an insurmountable task and it becomes a drain on energy.

Having a well-organized home office can be the difference between constant interruption and constant work flow. Organize your office around reducing distractions and increasing flow, and you will find your productivity rising.