My moment of truth came when I discovered the *ESC* key on my computer wouldn't work. I managed to pull off the little plastic key cap and have a look underneath. and there it was. A Kellogs Rice Krispie! It hadn't done any harm but it was sitting there, hard and sticky, preventing my Escape key being pressed down. It seemed, at the time, like a meaningful metaphor for the chaos my life had become. A dire warning that there would always be some niggling little obstruction stopping me from escaping! Of course, I'd blown-up a little domestic accident into a doom-laden life-prophecy. It was, after all, just an old bit of breakfast Cereal. But that's how your mind can turn when you're trying to juggle important bits of your life without the ability to organise properly. If you were already rich you'd have a nanny to organise the kids, a cook to get breakfast, a chauffeur to do the school run and a P.A. to answer the email while you sipped your cranberry juice and greeted your personal trainer!

Such are the perils of trying to work from home. Running an online business while your young family live their (messy) lives around you can make you wonder if the holy grail of making a full time income online is really worth it. And when you're in the position of not quite knowing what you're doing online, and trying to juggle every new super-scheme you've signed up for, and trying to scan bits of HTML like you were reading Arabic through a bathroom window, It can seem overwhelming.

And what started as a great idea to achieve financial independence is now causing you sleepless nights. And it's making you very snappy with your partner. And that's not good!Harvard Business School does teach organizational skills, and that's what you need to become effective as a Home-Based Online Entrepreneur.  Luckily, getting organized doesn't mean you have to enroll, or write an MBA thesis.

Being Organized is a vital skill for the Online Businessperson. It's a skill that can be learned, and that can be improved with practice.In this article I'm only going to give you one tip, but it's one tip that will teach you two things.

The Tip is this: Do Not Open Your Email Inbox Until You Have Completed Your Important Daily Tasks.

And the two things you should learn?

1. Focusing=Action (the more you are focused on achieving just one thing, the more likely you are to achieve it.)

and 2. If you ever want to escape, you need to keep your Laptop off the kitchen table while the kids are eating cereal!