If I had to calculate how much time I've wasted online, I'd be pretty embarrassed. Sometimes, it's easy to feel like you're working when you're sitting at your computer -- and doing nothing of value. Five minutes spent here and there replying to non-work email, sending instant messages, posting messages on Facebook or even surfing the web can really add up. Even as I type this, I've got two instant messaging conversations going on in the background. Granted, it's not exactly the middle of my workday, but it's still slowing me down.

However, I'm not sure this is much different than work before these things were invented. I've always had things to distract me...newspapers, phone calls, unrelated errands and the like. More than once, I've gone to a coffee shop with the intent of working and instead found myself lost in a magazine someone's left lying there.

Since I'm the kind of person who tends to work a lot, these productivity killers probably aren't killing my productivity. These distractions instead provide a much needed break in the day. Sometimes, a little human contact and a break from work are all I need to get going again. Perhaps it's better to sacrifice five minutes on idle behaviour than to lose a few days from a stress-induced flu.

Do you fritter away your time? Is it such a bad thing?

When I got into consulting, I was thrilled by the idea of waking up when I wanted. Even today, I love being able to set my own hours. I can work late at night, in the afternoon, on weekends -- whenever it suits me.

Some people like the idea of being able to work by their own body rhythms (also known as circadian rhythms). I've never explored the scientific side of those sorts of rhythms, but I do know that I function much better when I start working at 10 am than when I start at 6 am, no matter how much sleep I got the night before. In fact, when I was a teenager working at a fast food restaurant, my boss observed that my work went three times as fast when I was on the night shift. So he moved me to afternoon and evening shifts.

What time of day do you work best?

Related:

• Consultants become Starbucks junkies, right?
• Why become a consultant?

As part of our regular Friday Five series, here's a list of ways to gain five hours a week. Hot tip #2 stood out for me:

Get good at saying ‘no’ to people.

I've always been one of those people who'll do anything to help another person. But, as my marketing consultant website shot to the top of the search engines, I found that I was inundated with requests for (free) help. I had to start saying "no". But then I realized that I could share some of my experience through Become a Consultant Blog here at Consultant Journal. I may not offer quite as much one-to-one guidance, but I like to think that I'm able to help more people at one time now.

Work-life balance comes up a lot when I talk about the reasons to become a consultant.  I love consulting because of the many non-financial rewards it's brought me. (Of course, I love the financial rewards too.) Flexibility, time with family, freedom to travel, and so on. It's great when you can call your own shots.

But, when you have your office in your home, it can sometimes be hard to maintain a work-life balance. I used to have my home office in a corner of my living room. That made it hard to ever tear myself away from work. Now I have a larger home and I use one bedroom (the one with the best view!) for my home office. It helps to be able to close the door on work. Otherwise, when I'm watching a movie or making dinner, the "ding" of new email is likely to pull me back. I don't have that problem anymore.

How's your work-life balance? Do you feel in tune with yourself, regardless of whether you work for yourself or someone else?

Related to work-life balance:

• Consulting brings work-life balance

Once or twice a month, I use email to interact with a customer service rep or technical support rep from a company. I've sent emails about everything from my tax return software to business insurance. In about half of all cases, the email I receive from the customer service team blatantly ignores the email I sent.

I don't mean that I got a generic response. I mean that the rep never took the time to read and understand my message. For example, when I emailed Quicktax about using their tax return software when I needed to show a change of home business locations, I got a long (and irrelevant) email about writing off moving expenses for people moving to go to university or a new job. Even though I'd mentioned the exact business tax return form and used the term "business use of home", the rep sent a completely irrelevant email.

As a small business owner, you'll receive email from clients, vendors, partners and contacts. Take the time to read each email carefully. Don't glance down the email, see one word and dash off a response. If you really want to market on a one-to-one basis, you need to make sure every communication is relevant. Otherwise, you're not only wasting your time, you're risking entire relationships -- between the recipient and you, your company and your brand. Read carefully. Write slowly. It matters.

Entrepreneur's blog has a great piece on how a home business makes life easier. Tax deductions, work-life balance...there are tons of reasons to have a home business. If you're interested in those reasons and more, check out these related articles from ConsultantJournal:

• list of tax write offs
• Become a consultant - big list of reasons
• Why become a consultant?
• Consulting brings work/life balance
• Reason # 3 for becoming a consultant: work from home

Too much work? Never! Keep piling on the work, as long as the cheques are rolling in -- that was my mantra when I started out in consulting. If making $12,000 in one month was good, then making more than that was even better, right?

Ten years have gone by and I'm much more likely now to say no to work. Managing my schedule is a delicate balancing act. It's important to me that I have time for family, myself, recreation and sleep -- not just work. I sometimes say no to work, even when the opportunity looks fabulous. I've learned that money isn't everything. I can't buy more time with family and I can't function on six hours of sleep for months on end.

Over at Future of the Web, Jesse Skinner has similar thoughts about his first eight months as a consultant. He also notes the importance of scheduling "free" work for friends and family.

Related:

• Is it time to leave your home office?
• Consulting fee rates
• Consulting brings work-life balance

People often ask me how I can stay motivated and actually get work done. "I couldn't possibly work without a boss chasing after me," they say. "I'd be watching movies, shopping, going to restaurants, sleeping in -- I'd never work." Well, I'll let you in on a little secret...

If you stop working and don't keep on top of timelines, you're not going to have a means of paying for movies, shopping, meals or the roof over your head. Avoiding that sort of scenario has always been pretty darn motivating for me! I feel much happier when my bank account is flush with cash and I'm making money. It allows me to do all the other things I love to do -- like watching movies, shopping, eating, sleeping in, travelling and so on.

Moreover, I was never one of those employees you had to hassle. I've always been a self-starter. That's how you get ahead in the workforce. I put myself through university by working -- if I hadn't worked hard, I wouldn't have been able to go to school. Again, that's pretty motivating.

So, if you're having a hard time staying motivated, think about what motivates you. Why'd you get into this business? What will make you stick it out? For me, the freedom of calling the shots, making money and having work-life balance are all I need right now.

Related posts:

• Acting as if
• Staying motivated; fighting depression
• Tips for dealing with home office isolation
• Light therapy boxes

Men want more family time, according to an article on working parents in the Guardian. A survey quoted in the article suggests 70 percent of men want a 50/50 partnership.

I've previously noted that consulting can bring work-life balance. During the course of my consulting career, I've run into many parents who got into freelancing or consulting so they could spend more time with family. These parents range from a freelance writer who earns about $6,000 a year by working four hours a week to a medical services consultant who makes around $120k a year by working three days a week.

I got into consulting long before I started my family. But it was always on my radar. So, when I had my son, I figured out how to work my consulting time around his schedule. He has my full attention, when he isn't sleeping. So far, I haven't needed to use outside childcare. However, my husband has a flexible work schedule that allows him to time shift, so that he can cover me when I'm at business meetings, making important phone calls or otherwise busy at work. He has to make up the time later, but we figure it's worth it. And we won't be in this situation forever. But, for the time being, it allows us to achieve work-life balance. My husband and I both have time with our son and time for our careers. (Of course, my husband has all but done away with the consulting he used to do outside of work!)

Related: Why become a consultant?

Work focus -- that concentration you need to stay on task - remains vital to those working from home. To focus on your work, you need to minimize distractions. But how do you focus on work when you're at home, with the kitchen, TV, radio, children, family, hobbies, and other important life influences around you?

Lillian wrote in to ask how I achieve work focus. Here's how:

8 tips for achieving work focus

1. Make a to do list. Even if you keep adding things to the list, at least you've done something to prioritize your work.
2. Keep a journal. Having some notes about what you've done today, yesterday, this week, this month and this year can help you determine where you spend your time -- and what you've achieved.
3. Set up a proper home office. No matter whether it's a desk beside your bed or a full-sized room with a door, a home office can help you maintain work focus. When you're in that space, you're working -- this can help you and your family remember you're there to work.
4. Get caller ID and voice mail. Screen calls from friends and family when you're working. Attend to high priority calls from clients before you call your sister to hear about her new kitchen paint color.
5. Establish separate work and personal email accounts. Avoid replying to personal email when you're supposed to be working.
6. Turn off the TV.
7. Turn the radio away from talk stations. Background music may be enjoyable, but avoid listening to talk radio. How can you listen to a show and do your work? You can't.
8. Let your family and friends know your schedule. Tell people when they can expect to reach you and when it's okay to socialize. And try to make yourself available during non-work times, especially to the people with whom you live.

What are your tips for staying on task?

I just Googled for work-life balance. Is this a Canadian term? Almost all the top results are from Canadian websites. Do only Canadians have work-life balance? Or does the rest of the world use a different term?

On any given day, most established consultants are in a position of balancing sales and work. When you look at the day ahead, how much time should you spend on finding new clients vs. doing work for the clients you already have?

When you're starting out, it makes sense to spend a lot of time on prospecting for new clients and making connections with people in your network As a new consultant, you must market yourself to get work and, until the work starts to pile up, you probably won't have a hard time balancing work and sales.

But what about an established consultant? I've been doing consulting for 10 years. How much time should I be spending on networking, marketing, advertising and other activities that will bring clients in the door? I've usually got a full plate of work -- so much that I refer work to other people or hire subcontractors. Most of my work comes via my website or via word of mouth. What should someone like me do to keep their name out there?

Being a marketing consultant, I've honed my own marketing over the years. I go to a few well chosen networking events each year. I designed my website to bring in traffic, so that I don't have to spend so much time looking for new clients. And I focus most of my marketing and networking efforts on my existing clients. They're the most likely to hire me again, refer me to other clients, or act as a reference.

I suspect many other established consultants are in a similar position. And, really, I don't worry about sales vs work too much. Not knowing how much time to spend on each activity is a nice problem to have at this point in my life.

Related

• Finding new clients
• Basic selling skills

Via Canadian Entrepreneur blog, I discovered this fabulous Albert Einstein quote:

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

That reminds me of a quote I recently read about gifted children. A study found that, if you simply tell kids they're smart, they'll usually seek easy tasks, so that they can receive praise for doing well. If you tell kids they really work hard, they'll choose more challenging tasks. In the marathon of life, persistence often pays off.

As a consultant and small business owner, you can also reap the rewards of persistence. In my more than 10 years as a marketing consultant, I've seen many people leave the market, simply because they weren't making $50,000 or $100,000 a year within a couple of months. Although earning a high hourly rate from consulting fees is certainly doable, it takes a little time to build up your sales funnel and kick your business into gear. People who stick it out (or start out slowly by keeping their day jobs) eventually enjoy the rewards of becoming a consultant. Good things come to those who wait.

I first fell in love with the idea of freelancing when I was 18. My college journalism prof told me that she'd arranged her work schedule so that she could spend all day on Fridays doing freelance work. In fact, she'd arranged the rest of her workflow so that she didn't have to be at a job for 40 hours a week. This sounded like a great life to me.

One of my friends, a financial planner, found that he just didn't like working for someone else. So he started his business with the intent of never taking orders again. Sure, his clients give him direction, but he can gently nudge them away, if they really get on his nerves.

Another friend, a fitness consultant, gave up a stable job in teaching because she wanted more time for her own interests. She wanted to work with women and children and still have time for her own family.

What are your reasons for consulting and freelancing?

Income for a stay at home mom? Is it really possible to stay home with your child, earn money and keep a hand in your career? You bet. By structuring your life to provide income, you can be a stay at home mom (or dad) – even after your maternity leave runs out.

Earn an income and stay at home

Staying at home may sound expensive, but, if you earn an income at hone, you may earn as much or more than you would at a regular job. Say what? My calculations show that a stay-at-home parent who makes just $300 a month actually earns the equivalent of  $50,000 to $76,000. If you earn more like $1,000 or $2,000 a month by working from home, you may actually be more in line with an $100,000 income.

Earn an income by working from home

Through work from home opportunities, you can generate money to help offset the income you’d gain by returning to work. In fact, many stay-at-home moms return to work by working from home. Some of the work-from-home moms (and dads) I know enjoy rewarding careers as business consultants, technical writers, engineers, graphic designers, jewelry designers, fitness consultants and even Tupperware consultants! (See more consulting business ideas.)

Maintain your career

Choosing to stay home with your child doesn’t mean you have to give up your career. Many people decide to start businesses, consult or freelance for their former employer, telecommute, work part-time, teach continuing education and community centre courses, or even write articles for newspapers and magazines. Whether you stick with your previous field or venture into new territory, you face a wealth of opportunities to earn money from home. And you don’t have to earn peanuts. In fact, if you were toying with picking up a part-time job, I urge you to read up on how to become a consultant. Why make $8 an hour when you could be making 10 times that? Don’t sell yourself short.

Broaden and build your career

Regardless of whether you work for yourself or someone else, you can enrich your work experience by becoming a work from home mom (or dad). Some of the work from home parents I know have accomplished such feats as:

• Franchising a business throughout a major metropolitan area
• Starting and expanding an ecommerce real estate service business throughout the West
• Landing a column in a big city newspaper
• Developing a consulting business that now subcontracts work to others
• Garnering media attention in major magazines and newspapers
• Securing $100,000 in seed capital for engineering projects

…and those are just people I know in my city!

It’s no secret that I think becoming a consultant is a great career move. If you’re interested in learning how to become a consultant, check out my become a consultant series.

Not convinced you could be a consultant? My Discover Your Inner Consultant workbook will help you figure out what skills and experience you have to offer as a consultant.

Subscribe to my Become a Consultant newsletter and get a FREE copy of Seth Godin's Bootrstrapper's Bible - a guide to starting a new business. See the form at the very top of this page!

"Income for stay at home mom – income is possible" from Become a Consultant at ConsultantJournal.com.

Post resume for telecommute jobs -- here's how to do it. If you're looking to post a resume for telecommute jobs or work at home jobs, you should consider highlighting revelant skills and experiences. Companies looking at resumes for telecommute positions want to see that you can work independently, set and achieve goals and manage projects effectively.

To determine how your skills and experiences fit with the needs of employers, you should consider doing a personal inventory. Although I've previously emphasized the benefits of a personal inventory for consulting, the same principles and exercises can apply to anyone looking to work from home. Drawing out your life, work and education experience is key to job search success, whether you want to be self-employed or not.

"Post resume for telecommute jobs" from Become a Consultant at ConsultantJournal.com.