A medical transcriptionist is required to be extremely disciplined and focused. However, when the transcriptionist decides to work from home things can go out of hand.

Home brings along numerous distractions. It is imperative that you keep distractions at bay or your home-based career is doomed. Here are a few guidelines to help you focus on your work.

• Make a work routine and stick to it. Inform everyone at home about your working hours and ask them not to disturb you.

• Put your phone on answering mode. You can check your messages when you take a logical break. Make sure your business phone is active though.
• Don’t get online unless your work demands. When you are online, stay away from networking sites.
• Don’t attend to domestic chores when you are working. Don’t prioritize anything else over your work.
• Don’t keep the television on during your working hours. If you have your favorite show coming on during your working hours, either record it to watch later, or adjust your work hours so that you are done with your work when your show starts. Or, just change your taste!
• Inform your family, friends and neighbors about your work timings and tell them that you will be unavailable during those times.
• Don’t prolong your breaks for a sneak peak into the latest issue of your favorite magazine. Prolonging breaks can disturb the flow of work.
• Don’t make personal calls during your work hours. You may be tempted to call family and friends, but your calls may get extended for a long time, disrupting your routine. If talking to loved ones keeps you motivated, call them but limit your calls to a few minutes.

Medical transcription jobs can be difficult, yet often it is the transcriptionist themselves that make the job hard for themselves.  Here are a handful of tips that could turn what is a tough job into a much easier one.

Organization: Like all professions, being organized is one of the essential keys to success. Medical transcriptionists should ensure their workspace is clear and dedicated to the job at hand; that all essential equipment is in place and working; and that all non-essential items are out of the way. Medical transcriptionists should also ensure their working time is organized and not disrupted by non-work related distractions.

Time: A job is a job, even a work from home job. You should clearly define what your working hours are and stick to them. You can then shut out external distractions and get on with the job. Distractions only serve to lengthen a working day – often with frustrating consequences.

Maintenance: There is nothing more frustrating than having equipment that breaks down on a regular basis. A good maintenance program will ensure your equipment is always in good working order. Part of the maintenance program should include restocking consumables such as batteries, paper and printer inks or toners.

Those three components, if addressed properly, will ensure you have a smooth day at the office – the home office included.  Ignoring just one of those areas could lead to frustrations and it is those frustrations that tend to spoil our day at work. It’s very easy for one frustration to magnify into several – cut those frustrations off before they begin and you will have turned all your tough medical transcription jobs into relatively easy ones.

The thought of working from home sounds oh-so-delightful. Well, ask the ones who work from home. They will have another story to tell. Home is home to a number of distractions, all vying for your time and attention. It is difficult to focus on work when you see so much around. In today’s post, we will look at how a home-based medical transcriptionist can avoid distractions.

First, make sure your family, whether they are at home, and your friends, know that you work from home. Make them aware of your working hours. If you have young children at home, make them understand your work timings. Get them taken care of while you are working.

Next, don’t prioritize household work when you have work pending. You cannot let domestic worries trouble you at work. Attending to domestic needs is important but they should not take precedence over your work or you will find your work as well as your credibility at risk. It is important that you treat your home office as an actual office from where you cannot attend to your household responsibilities.

One of the biggest distractions for a lot of people is the television. In medical transcription, there is no scope of TV. You cannot afford to switch it on even during your breaks. Try to finish your work before your favorite program so that you don’t ruin your work or feel guilty.

Like the television, the Internet is a huge distraction. Close all your e-mail clients and social networking sites while you are working. In fact, don’t access the Internet during your working hours unless your work demands it.

Now, these are the most basic tips to avoid distractions. You will be able to come up with more as per your needs and working style. It is important that you don’t let work take over your life but it is also important not to let other things get bigger than work during working hours.

Whether you are a home-based medical transcriptionist or any other professional working from home, one of the factors driving you towards home-based work must have been flexibility. So, how flexible are your work hours? Do you have a routine or do you prefer to work at your will?

Home has comfort but it is really not ideal has a workplace; it brings with it distractions and responsibilities, both domestic and social. It is very easy to get distracted while working from home. You have to be really disciplined. Here are a few tips that you can use to avoid distractions.

Don’t turn on the television. TV can be a big addiction even if there is nothing worth watching. You don’t even realize the amount of time you waste surfing channels and waiting for your favorite program to start. Don’t turn on the TV until you have finished work for the day.

Don’t attend to domestic chores until you have finished your work. Do not let domestic worries trouble you at work. Treat your home-office as an actual office from where you cannot attend to your household responsibilities.

Let family and friends know that you work from home; inform them of your working hours. Let your children know that you are working, and inform them of the time you plan to take breaks.

Close all e-mail clients and networking websites during work hours. They give you company when you work in isolation. However, they take over your life if you are not careful. You can postpone all sorts of social networking till you have finished your work.

While it is important that you take breaks between work in order to avoid back pain, stress, and fatigue, getting up too often can ruin your work. Avoid getting up in the middle of a task. Take only logical breaks.

Work during work hours and do nothing else.Corollary: Work ONLY during work hours.
Don’t let domestic worries trouble you at work. If you have children at home, ask another member of the family to take care of them or get a baby-sitter. If you have a household job pending, don’t tend to it until you have finished your official work.

Don’t get up from work unnecessarily.
Taking breaks is important but arbitrary breaks cause more harm than good. Take logical breaks instead. Take a break after you finish a set of logical tasks. This way, you will prevent fatigue and stress and yet keep yourself from getting distracted.

Don’t watch TV during your working hours, not even during breaks.
In medical transcription, TV is a complete no-no. You cannot let other sounds distract you while you are transcribing. And even during breaks, you risk making your breaks longer if you watch TV.

Keep away from social networking during work hours.
We tend to check mails as often as we blink. Mails, unless it is related to work, and social networking sites should be avoided until you finish your work for the day. Instead of checking these sites often, reward yourself with an hour or two of networking online once you have finished your work.

Let family and friends know of your work hours.
Your family and friends ought to know when to meet you or call you. They should not find themselves being reprimanded for disturbing you during your working hours. Also, let your children know that you are working, and inform them of the time you plan to take breaks.

If you are planning to start home-based medical transcription business thinking you’ll get all the comforts of being at home, you are mistaken, well, to some extent for sure. You do get the comforts of home, but those comforts can spoil your work as well. Yeah, distractions are countless and present everywhere at home. And if you become too comfortable at home, everything else at home will take you away from work. Not sure about that? Well, let me explain.

Let me start with the television, the newspaper, or a phone call. However much you try, you cannot fix your time with them. And if you get up in the middle of work to watch a TV show, read the paper, or attend a call, there are chances you won’t be able to get back to work soon enough. Breaks are essential in helping you keep your cool but if your breaks distract you from work, spoiling your routine, you are in trouble.

The best way you can avoid distractions is by following a work routine. Plan your day beforehand and then stick to the plan at all costs. Now, you need to keep in mind an important thing while making the plan: you have to make a reasonable plan, a feasible one. If there are important tasks around the house that need attention or if you want to do something, do it ONLY after you have finished work. Not only will you be more productive during your work hours but you will also have ample time at the end of the day to attend to chores, or pamper yourself. Remember, discipline is the key to doing well as a home-based medical transcriptionist.

Anything and everything can become distracting when you are working home. I was at my in-laws’ place last week and all I had to do was send some e-mails. But even that took me a long time. I used to take hours to compose one e-mail. No, it wasn’t because people disturbed me.

In fact, everyone made sure I wasn’t bothered when I was in front of the computer. But the sound of the television, the giggle of the baby in the house, any kind of conversation – all kept me away from work. Somehow, my mind paid attention to everything that was going around and refused to work. I knew that if I finished my work early, I could spend hours with the rest of the family, chatting, eating, and having fun. And yet, I dragged work for hours, ruining my days.

The home-based transcriptionist encounters distractions everyday and he/she must overcome them in order to work. We really need to discipline ourselves when working from home (or from anywhere, for that matter). Here’s what my plan of action is for my working-from-home days.

• I will not switch the television on until I have finished my day’s work. After all, I wouldn’t get this luxury if I worked in an office.
• In the breaks that I take, I won’t make unnecessarily calls. Talking to friends while you still have work pending can spoil your routine.
• I will not extend my work hours. I will work only during my fixed hours and don’t take my work beyond just because there’s time.
• I will make deadlines for myself and stick to them.
• I won’t attend to the kitchen and other domestic work until I have finished my work.

This plan should give me enough time to relax and have fun later. What do you think?