Interested in working at home but because you don’t have a money tree in your backyard, you need to build up your income before you can leave your teaching career?
That’s how I did it and it wasn’t easy, but it is possible.
If that’s the route you want to take, here are my 11 tips for making time for your work-at-home job:
1. Schedule it. You wouldn’t phone it in with your teaching job and this is the same thing. You know you have to be at school from x time to y time.
If you don’t show up, you don’t get paid.
Schedule your WAH job time too. Remind yourself if you don’t “show up”, you won’t get paaaaid.
2. Put boundaries on your teaching job.
Ever tell yourself “I’m just going to grade a few papers”? Before you know it, the entire night has passed and you haven’t eaten and forgot to say hello to your family. Been there, done that.
If that sounds like you, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news? It means you’re a hard worker and that will serve you well when starting your own work-from-home business.
The bad news? If you want to work from home, you’re going to have to set boundaries on the amount of time you spend grading outside of school.
3. Consider this: What do you want long term? If you want to stay teaching long term, then do yo’ thang. But if you don’t want to teach the rest of your life, will spending all your time grading get you in a new career? Whether it was Einstein or someone else, this statement holds true: “Insanity is doing the same thing while expecting a different result.”
4. Decide what deserves the most focus. I know that can be hard — you might be thinking “How will I get it all done?????”
To that I say:
- Is it all necessary? (spoiler alert — no)
- What do you want most? Now believe in yourself and go after it.
Here’s our take:
In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear says that you’ll line up with what you believe is true about yourself. You’ve probably seen this with your students. Students who believe they are bad students – either behaviorally or academically or both, are often to act in accordance with that. I had a student a few years ago who was absolutely brilliant but because he hadn’t always gotten A’s like his brother, thought he was incapable. Sadly, his actions and behavior lined up with that. I still wonder what would happen if he started to believe me that he was brilliant instead. So what do you believe about yourself?
Are you capable of working at home? Are you a hard worker? Do good things happen to you? If your answer is no, then working from home will be hard for you to obtain, but not because you can’t, but instead because you believe you can’t.
