If you ask anyone at my past jobs, they’ll tell you I was a hard working and fairly organized person. But when it came to my home, things were quite messy. Sometimes I forgot to empty the trash, my bed was covered in documents and cables for weeks at a time, I even misplaced my wallet seconds after arriving home…everyday.

I’ve had week long cycles of work followed by a Netflix binge, and collapsing on the couch only to oversleep and rush to work the next morning. One time I woke up 15 minutes before my 10am shift, brushed my teeth, grabbed my uniform, and ran down the street in my socks to punch in before starting my shift. (Luckily I lived three blocks from my job. And I had an excellent runner’s form).

In these instances of near tardiness, I would spend the day counting the minutes before I go home only to repeat this process all the way into the weekend. Was it laziness that kept me from taking care of home? I put in all my effort at my jobs so that couldn’t be it. The true reason I fell behind on my housework and health was because I wasn’t working for myself.

I was performing 100% peak effort to be on time to work and do what was asked of me. When I was home, I relaxed and didn’t take care of what needed to be done to maintain a clean and organized household. Without realizing it, my home became a glorified break room from work. Though unintentional, I had conditioned myself to be stuck at work with long hours and short breaks followed by sleep and returning to work the next day.

Fast forward to today. I spend my evenings exercising, studying, cooking, cleaning, and planning the next day. Every now and then I’ll throw in some Netflix or gaming time. While I am still employed with a company, I’m really working for myself. Every aspect of my life is for my own personal benefit. Finances, health, learning, and entertainment. I have all my top priorities handled at home or away from my job. Instead of taking a break from my job to come home, I’m really taking a break from home to go to my job.

Working for yourself starts with being aware of the effort you put towards your happiness. If I had an opportunity to make money independently, I would want to be happy while I earn the money, and after it arrives in my pocket. This realization pushed me to take better care of myself and my home.

It took lots of experience for me to discover this. It all started coming together after I defined what I wanted out of life. Ever since then I’ve focused on achieving those goals and reflecting them in my daily life and environment. Working for a paycheck is one thing. But seeing my hard work changing my everyday life makes me feel positive and fulfilled. (And it definitely makes the 9 to 5 days go by faster). Take some time to consider where you are in life, where you want to be, and how to get there. Then, use everything in your environment to guide you in that direction. These are the first steps to working for yourself.

Peaceful in action, manic in thoughts.
Coding Fanatic

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