You remember what it was like in a regular job. Sun was out, you still had to work. Friends were going on a trip, you had to work. Could use a day to sort out the car but you had to work.

The good news is that working at home gives you the power to change all that. If your mates are organising a day away, you just sort your work around it and get away with them. If your head is feeling fried sitting in front of the computer, you have the power to switch off and get out in the sun for a while.

This doesn’t mean that working at home is a recipe for slacking off. More than ever you need to get through the work that’s on your plate or you wont get paid, or your business wont grow. I personally find that my line of work excites me enough that if I take an afternoon off to go for a walk, that evening I’ll be right back at the screen checking if I missed anything and trying to catch up on the few hours I’ve missed.

On the flip side, you have to remember to have a home life too. Not every hour you spend at home has to be working. Set a day or two days at the weekend where you simply don’t allow yourself to work and you really will feel like you’ve had a break and might not need to slack off during the week. Maybe if you play catch-up in the evenings you should set a late limit e.g. never work past 10pm.
If you set yourself a target of working x amount of hours per week then you’ll find that you usually manage to do it, even if you take breaks during what would normally be your main working hours if you were still in a non-work at home job. Don’t feel guilty about taking breaks, but don’t abuse them either.