If you are working in an office, there are some forms of discipline imposed by your employer, superiors and colleagues. However, there are no such restrictions while working at home. In fact, you have tremendous amount of freedom and flexibility to choose how and when you want to do your work. Without an adequate level of self-discipline, you will not be able to get things done on time and your work or business will eventually suffer. Hence, it is necessary to set certain standards of self-discipline for yourself. Below are some tips on how you can exercise some forms of self-discipline while working at home.

* Set your working hours for the day. Your family members should be informed of your working hours. This is to ensure that they will not disturb you unnecessarily while you work. Perhaps, you can have a sign displaying your working hours on your office door so that everyone in the house is aware of it. If you used to take lunch breaks, you can also have a sign indicating that too. Besides, with fixed working hours, your customers will know when to contact you.

* Prioritize your activities for each day. One way is to write down a list of things you need to do at the beginning of each day. After that, evaluate the tasks in the list and prioritize them according to their importance. Throughout the day, you should try to complete each task in the list according to their priority.

* Interruptions cannot be avoided, but need to be kept to a minimum. You need to be focused and try not to let interruptions from family members, friends or relatives take too much of your time while you work.

* Dress in office attire while you work at home. This will help to make you feel that you are working rather than relaxing at home. Besides, in case a customer or business associate pays you a visit, you will not be caught looking improper in your attire.

* Assess your own performance on your work. If there is room for improvements, you need to develop strategies to improve your work. In particular, you need to evaluate your speed of doing your tasks. If certain tasks are taking too much of your time, try to think of ways to increase your speed. It is useful to implement ways to cut down the time you spend on repetitive tasks which you need to do regularly. If you can increase your speed of doing these tasks, much time will be saved.

* Set aside specific times for doing tasks such as opening the mail, paying bills and handling paperwork.

* Keep all e-mails in your inbox until a certain time of the day to read them. You can set aside a specific time each day to handle this task.

* Consolidate all outdoor activities such as appointments and errands to be carried out in a specific morning or afternoon. This will save you traveling time, effort and costs.

* Plan telephone calls before dialing. You need to be clear of what you want to say and what you want to accomplish in making the call. Through planning, you will reduce the amount of time you spend on the phone and the number of calls you make.

* Schedule time off from your work on a regular basis. You need to work on staying fit and healthy by taking time off to recharge your batteries. You can join some sports activities to keep yourself physically active. A short vacation trip at certain times of the year will help to make you feel re-energized.