Recovering from Illness

The past week-and-a-half has been pretty rough around our household. My husband came down with a whomping sinus infection, which I swiftly managed to catch as well. While the biggest benefit of working from home is easily that I am able to stay home whenever I am sick, it also means that even while I'm sick, I still have to get work done. So, my home office became the couch pretty much all of last week. I would nap, write an article if I could muster the energy or spare a bit of time in between blowing my endlessly dripping nose, and take another nap. Not exactly ideal working conditions.

Thankfully, this week, I am pretty much back to my old self - for the most part. Now, if I can just teach myself some better time management skills, I will be well on my way to success. You see, working from home comes with a line of distractions. First of all, there are Facebook and Twitter. I have a rotten obsession with checking these websites over and over throughout the day - I always think I'm going to miss something important. Or, I'm procrastinating on my work, and I just feel like poking around to see what's going on. Or, I'm trying to log onto Facebook at just the right time to answer a Georgetown Cupcake trivia question and win a free dozen of cupcakes shipped right to my door. Woops. So, there's that whole problem that obviously needs some attention. The second problem is my overflowing DVR. It just bothers me knowing the amount of recordings I have sitting there, just patiently waiting to be watched. I hate to fall behind, and since I write about TV shows for examiner.com, I do a pretty decent job of keeping up with most shows regularly. It's the shows I don't write about that I struggle with leaving sit there, recorded and un-watched. I try to limit myself - maybe just a couple episodes a day to catch up, but then that turns into more, and before I know it, I've wasted two hours I can't get back because I became obsessed with clearing the DVR. Then, there's the whole keeping the house clean aspect. Due to my clogged head and lack of ambition last week, I am way behind on chores. A mound of dishes, a kitchen floor in need of a good Swiffer, a bedroom that could use a good dusting, a bathroom that could use a cleaning, and piles of unorganized messes lying about from me moving my office around and not taking care of the mail. Needless to say, the place is a mess. I like a clean working environment, and it's hard to ignore the mess and get work done anyway.

Today, I must admit - I did pretty well to start. I didn't set my alarm because I took medicine for my cold last night before bed and hoped a good night of sleep would finally kick this awful thing to to curb. Well, that was a bad idea. I heard them collecting the garbage from the communal bins at our condo around 8:30, when I was going to get up, but fell back to sleep until almost 10:00. Not the best way to start the day off productively. I still managed to crank out a couple projects before lunch, but since then, my attention span has been dwindling. Again, I will be forced to get more work done tonight, probably until I go to bed. But, you know what I continually notice? I am most productive during the evening hours. I guess that's okay, but I sure would feel better if I could just get more accomplished during the daytime instead. Once a procrastinator, always a procrastinator, I suppose.

With my husband being gone pretty much all of today/tonight, home for a short while, then gone all day tomorrow/tomorrow night, I am confident I will get plenty of work completed so that when his day off rolls around on Wednesday, we can take our healthy selves out and do something fun for a change. The only time I've left the house in the last week was to go see the movie Arthur last night - that's sad. But, when you're that sick, what can you do?

I'm setting some new goals for myself. I'm going back to setting an alarm as of tomorrow, I am going to get through all of the work I have on my plate by tomorrow night when I go to bed, and now that I don't get dizzy every time I stand up, I am going to start playing the Wii games I was using to work out regularly again. I was doing so well prior to this massive sinus infection!

What do you do to overcome procrastination habits or find motivation? Leave a comment below!