Working from home a double edge sword
Posted on November 6, 2011 by admin
Working from is often a dream of many people. Not having to pick yourself each day early in the morning to fight the daily grind and road rage as you commute work and all the stops in between. If you find yourself in a position to start working from congratulations this can be a truly rewarding experience that can bring you happiness and more free time in your life. But beware, there are also many pitfalls that could cause this strategy to backfire on you and find yourself wanting the office once again. Here are a few tips that I highly recommend you implement otherwise you might find that work is dominating your life and you don’t have any separation between your work and social/family life.
- You must have a private office where you can close the door
When you work at home it is extremely important that you create an efficient workspace that is professional. Working on the kitchen counter or on the couch sounds lovely at first and great for a change of pace, but you will quickly find your productivity decreasing and your work load will start to invade other areas of your life because it is simply not efficient to work laying in bed or being too comfy. There are many valid reasons why the workplace evolved outside of homes and we must remember some of those basic rules when creating an environment at home. Although it is not always possible, this ideally is a room where you can close the door and have privacy. Even though you have been able to remove co-workers from your immediate space this doesn’t mean you won’t have important phone calls to make to conduct your business and don’t forget there is no more IT department so you’ll most likely be making a few calls sometime in the future to fix your printer or computer. Lastly if you have other people around you at home(kids, spouse, roommate) it is imperative that they respect your work time and a door is imperative to enforcing privacy and productivity. Otherwise you will find yourself easily distracted with zero work output on those days you need to push yourself a bit to work. It’s amazing how a trip to Starbucks can eat up the day without focus now. You’ll welcome any interruption to procrastinate. - Set business hours to limit the work day
Now that you achieve more freedom and hopefully gained all those commuting hours back, don’t waste them. It’s important to be able to set hours where you shut your work day off and do other things. Remember this is your time now, solitaire doesn’t count anymore, so work productively otherwise take a break come back when your inspired again. Don’t lose all the hours you just gained back into life. - Have a proper office, with the necessities of office life
Ensure that you have everything you need in your newly created workspace. A printer, a scanner, a fax machine, paperclips, pens the basic necessities you need. The first time it takes you 2 hours to send a fax to complete a simple 5 minute task you may rue the day you ever decided to work from home.
Overall I would always vote to work from home, better view, more control of your life, more free time. But be aware of why the office with co-workers is still the standard and ensure that you create and follow some of your self imposed guidelines to ensure work is still separated from your social/family life. Otherwise work can invade all aspects of life and affect everything negatively as you put undue pressure and stress from you work life into your personal life.