This Book Wasn’t a Goal—It Was a Survival Strategy

How The Clever Work-From-Home Life Helped Me Stay Afloat

This is not the book I set out to write. And by the time I started drafting it, my carefully plotted five-year plan was in tatters. I was already a published author. I had written before. But this time, the words weren’t part of a vision or a brand strategy. They were part of a breakdown.

I didn’t plan to write The Clever Work-From-Home Life—I needed to. Desperately.

I had been working from home for years, long before it was trendy or convenient. And somewhere in the middle of managing Zoom calls, grocery lists, never-ending laundry piles, and trying to keep a child fed, safe, and loved—I hit a wall. Not the kind of wall you can push through with another cup of coffee or a new planner. The kind of wall that makes you stop and ask, *"Can I really keep doing this?"

I remember sitting at my dining table, surrounded by sticky notes, bills, and a lukewarm cup of tea, thinking: "Something has to give."

That moment wasn’t a breakdown. It was a breakthrough.

"This isn’t a book about hustle. It’s a book about sustainability. It’s not about doing all the things—it’s about choosing the right things, for your season, your sanity, and your story." (Chapter 1)

I started writing down the little things that made my days easier: morning rituals, batch working, routines that actually worked for me. I tracked what burned me out and what gave me energy. I paid attention to when I felt like I was winning—even in small ways. It wasn't pretty or organized at first. Just raw notes and reminders scribbled in between errands and client calls.

Eventually, I realized I was building something. Not a business plan. Not a productivity framework. But a survival guide.

"You don’t need another planner. You need a practice." (Chapter 3)

I didn’t need more tools. I needed trust—in myself, in my rhythms, in my own definition of what success looked like from home.

There’s this myth that if you work from home, everything gets easier. That the flexibility somehow cancels out the pressure. But what nobody tells you is that the pressure amplifies when your home becomes your office, your daycare, your sanctuary, your everything. And when you're the one holding it all together, there is no off-switch.

When people say, “How do you get it all done?” I smile because they don’t see what I had to walk through to get here. The version of me that wrote this book didn’t feel clever at the time. She felt tired. Quiet. And determined to figure out how to keep going without losing herself in the process.

The Clever Work-From-Home Life was the answer to a question I was too busy to ask out loud: "Is it possible to thrive while working from home, or is survival the best we can do?"

What I discovered is that it can be both. You can survive and still build something sustainable. You can have days that feel like a mess and still be moving forward. You can redefine productivity on your own terms.

"This book is filled with pages I wrote at the end of long days and quiet mornings before the house woke up. It’s filled with mistakes I made so you don’t have to." (Preface)

I didn’t write this book to impress anyone. I wrote it because I needed to hold onto the parts of me that were getting drowned out by responsibility and routine. I wrote it because someone like me might need to know that they’re not alone.

And that’s the beautiful part. I never expected that survival mode would turn into something shareable. That the mess I was trying to make sense of could actually serve someone else. But the more I shared, the more I heard, "I thought it was just me." And that’s when I knew the words mattered.

So no, this book wasn’t a career goal. It was a survival strategy. It still is.

And if it speaks to you the way it spoke to me while I was writing it, then maybe it’s the strategy you didn’t know you needed, too.

This week’s Clever Chronicle is live—don’t miss it.

The Clever Work-From-Home Life is available now at CleverWAHMLife.com.

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