swedishbadgergirl, I'm sorry to hear about your rheumatoid arthritis, that's a bummer of a card you were dealt. I cannot speak to the "home schooling" aspect, but I have a bit of experience with self-motivation. I work from home and for the most part, until recently, I have had a tremendous amount of autonomy. If I wanted to, I could sit around in my PJ's all day and nobody would be the wiser. However, I'm in sales so if I don't actually produce, I make substantially less money. What I've always done is quite simple. I write a daily list of things I wan to accomplish: What I do, is I tell myself that once I've crossed everything off of that list, I can do what I want with my time. Maybe I get all of that done by 4pm and I have two hours to play music, read, hubski etc. My suggestion would be to approach your home schooling in the same way. Make your own list of what you would like to study that day. Do it and then reward yourself with something outside of scholarly pursuits that you enjoy. Good luck! I hope you are able to relieve the pain.
etc. -Expense report
-Call on 10 prospects
-Sign two new accounts worth "x" dollars
-prepare presentation for "x"
-read recent industry report for "x"
-activate 1 new account
-fill out "x" form
Thank you. The advice is really useful.
I stick to the same rules - both at work and after it The problem I often have is making my goals too big (or too many). That means that I either have no free time or don't complete every task from the list. The point is putting your own goals can be tricky to get right. Also while short-term (daily) goals may be easy to set up, first do the in-depth thinking about your long-term (for the whole year) ones. Only then set the smaller ones accordingly. But yeah, repeating myself, planning can be difficult. At least to me. And breaks. Never forget to take breaks in between learning. When you have a lot to do, it's easy to "forget" about them. But if you don't take them, you quickly begin to lose effectiveness. I think everyone has it's own rhythm. For me 5 minutes every 30 minutes or 10 minutes every hour works well. It's good to do some exercise (I'm often juggling), as that positively stimulates the brain and I always feel my mind significantly refreshed after doing even few minutes of some physical activity. I'd also say that the choice of a good textbook is very important. It can affect your learning speed and the amount of knowledge you'll remember in a positive or negative way - just like the regular teachers do. So always take some times to dig through the web reading and comparing people's opinions on which textbooks in given subjects are worth picking. It's actually one of your advantages over what you have when schooled in an institution. And if you have some doubts (when learning alone you'll sometimes feel in need of some teacher to tell you if you're going in the right direction) go and talk to someone qualified. You can go to your current public school teachers from time to time or you can write on a forum. What's important is to always dispel the doubts as that may sometimes block you. You might also consider contacting some qualified people (like teachers) from time to time to control your progress, if you need that. Good luck swedishbadgergirl!