People decide to open their own home business for many reasons. You may want to spend more time with your family, be your own boss, or make more money than a 9 to 5 job can offer. In a job that has you working for others, your entire work life and sometimes your home life is strictly scheduled for you. From the time you begin and end work, to breaks, vacation and pay, you have very little control.

However, in your own home business it can be hard to suddenly have complete control over everything and no one to lean on. Over time we gather habits, be they good or bad. When it comes to your home business, you have to figure out the bad ones and break yourself from doing them if you want to succeed.

Before you get the home business off the ground make sure that everything is in place. This means setting aside special hours in the day to do the most important activities. Remember that you will need to make contact with clients, banks and other businesses and most of this has to be done during the day and usually no later than 5pm. Prevent exhaustion by following the plans you laid out so that you don’t overwork yourself.

Business continues to move forward so you will have to constantly update yourself when new business ideals are put on the market. You can take classes or teach yourself over the internet, but stay ahead of the pack by knowing everything you can because it will help you to better develop your business.

A good way to break bad habits that can have adverse affects on your business is to write them down on paper whenever you discover a new one. Once you know the habits that are holding you back, you can implement different steps that can help you to overcome these habits.

For instance, smoking can be as bad for your business as it is for your health. If you smoke outside the home, you could lose valuable time by constantly stopping your work to run outside to have a cigarette.

Procrastination is by far one of the worst habits that can cause your business to crumble from the bottom up. If you constantly put off work and say that you’ll do it tomorrow, deadlines will pass and clients will choose other business owners that they can depend on. Once you lose customers it can be hard to seduce them back to using your company and services.

Your business is real, so treat it that way. If you don’t take it seriously, no one else will. However, this does not mean that you will have to bypass having a bit of fun every now and then. Taking a break to enjoy yourself will help you to stay fresh and on top of your business. If you work yourself too hard, you can quickly burn out and lose the enthusiasm you once had at the start of your home business.

Remember that this is a work at home business. You control the time and hours that you work. Realize that there may have been activities that you would have loved to do in the past but your 9 to 5 job was holding you back. Now that you don’t have those worries anymore, set aside some time to enjoy those activities. Your business is done at home but that does not mean that you have to be glued to your computer chair for the entire day.

Electronic equipment such as cell phones, text messengers and PDA’s will do a lot to make your business mobile. Try to separate business from pleasure and avoid pulling out your Blackberry every other minute to check an email when your spending time with the family, but do check daily if your away from home just to make sure that you catch any important messages that were left by clients.