I love working from home. I really do.
It takes discipline, sure… because it’s really easy to be distracted by the TV or a good book, or the neighbors chatting in the garden or by naptime in the hammock or playing Settlers of Cataan with your teenagers or gardening…
Come to think of it, those the reasons that it’s SO wonderful to work at home. You can sneak away and do those things and enjoy life so wonderfully. Work is always there, waiting. And it can be done at 8 AM or 8 PM, so whatever works, works.
Working at home automatically saves you about oh at LEAST an hour a day. Even if you worked a mile or two from your house, it takes a normal person time to gather up your stuff, get it in the car, get your coat, get the car started, wait at lights, park and go in and all that jazz. I know when I worked away from the house, it was closer to two hours a day saved. I never had the luxury of working a mile or two from home!
All that stuff about making sure you separate work from family life and balance and keeping things on a tight schedule, well, if that works for you, that’s great. I call that Work at Home, not working from home. Maybe it’s a subtle difference but just creating the ‘trappings’ of an office or workplace in your home isn’t truely grasping the wonderful aspects of working and living in your home jointly. The day to day disruptions are the icing on the cake of a home business! They make you truly appreciate that you can handle those things quickly and easily and then move on back to what you were working on.
A visit by a repairman is no longer a half day off work, stressful situation when they don’t return. You just hear the knock at the door, stop your work and go take care of it. Easy!
When you want to take some time and call your Dad and talk for an hour, great. Do it. How many people can do that at “work”?
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn that if you let too many things get in your way each day, that you’re not going to be making the grade, so to speak and most likely your income will drop resulting in a panic that makes you get crack-a-lacking (as my cohort in crime partner Rob likes to say…)
And trust me, you start missing deadlines on projects and shipping orders and such, and people will definitely give you a little “accountability”! HAHAHA…. People can send the meanest emails when you’re off track, trust me!
Working at home means to me a WAY less stressful routine. A calm and gentle morning, reading up on my daily blogs I like to read, checking my email and dealing with any customer service issues that came in overnight… Feeding the livestock and letting everyone in and out. I usually make a nice breakfast, because I love breakfast. Eggs, maybe bacon or toast and jam, sometimes even pancakes or hashbrowns, or some variation of the above. Not a lot, just a nice variety and done while watching the birds out the kitchen window and listening to the silence of the morning.
Then I get back on the computer, start IMing with my friend Lynda in Canada, whom does the same sorts of things I do with graphics and websites and all that. She and I chat throughout the day online… it’s sort of our equivalent of the water cooler! We’ll go hours without much and then just check in and say hi to make sure we’re on track. Sometimes we just chat about the kids or something funny, we chat about family and clients and struggles day to day as well as laugh about things that have happened! I highly suggest you find an IM buddy if you work at home! We’ve laughed and thought we need to have a online IM buddy connection service, like a dating service just for home workers! Who knows… we might just do it!
My card system keeps me on track. I set a goal… 5 cards a day or 4 cards a day and I get started. One card at a time. When I’m done, I’m done. Somedays its a breeze, other days its a struggle. I’ve been working at 2 in the morning and other times I’ve been done by noon. Whatever it takes to get er’ done… you do it.
When people act surprised that I work at home and have been doing it now for over six years on my own, and really about 10 years with my company, they always say, oh I can’t do that, or I’d go crazy or whatever. I just smile, think, the same in opposite. I would go nuts to go back to the work a day grind with it’s stress and constant anxiety and schedules and rigidity. I’m just not cut out for it, I suppose. It was very hard for me to be creative on demand 9 – 5 each weekday. And the struggles of motherhood and raising children, it was hard. Always making choices, and some weighed very heavy on my heart and mind. Now when I have a sick child, I’m there for her. When I have a kid with questions on school work, I’m there for her. When I just want a big old hug from Maggie… I get it. When Gypsy comes in and lays her head on my knee and sighs her happy contented doggie girl sigh, I know I’ve given her a wonderful dog life with her people all around her, every day. We’re all content and peaceful and calm for the most part… (sure there are stressful bits here and there, but for the most part, day to day is pretty routine) Tim says we are the most polite and easy going mother and daughters he’s EVER met and he sees a lot of us when he’s over doing handyman stuff. He’s amazed. But I’m not. It’s just a perk to living in a way that is simple and calm and relaxed.
It’s AWESOME…. and I recommend it for anyone… you’d be surprised at how many things you can do at home now… For just about mankind’s entire existence … we worked and lived in the same place. Home is truly where the heart of the family is. It was only the last 150-200 years that it’s been flipped flopped and now everyone thinks it’s the norm! Just like schooling… oh, don’t get me started on that. Public schooling as we know it has only been around for about 60-70 years! That’s hardly even enough time to get past the growing pains!
Working at home is the new thing… it’s becoming very trendy!
According to the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 136,602,000 workers over the age of 16 in the United States in 2004, a whopping 15.1% of them, or 20,673,000, people worked at home.
Here’s another cool thought…..
Currently, only four percent of the U.S. workforce works from home, but research shows that about 40% have jobs that could be performed at home. Our analysis shows that if they did, these 50 million new teleworkers could annually save 587 million barrels of oil (roughly equivalent to 74% of our annual Gulf Oil imports), reduce greenhouse gases by 101 million metric tons of CO2, and save almost $52 billion at the pump. Each worker individually would save 26 work-days and over $1,000 — time and money now wasted commuting. That’s the equivalent of an extra 5 weeks vacation a year!
Wow, that sure beats some of the green things we think are helping to save the environment… like using cloth shopping bags and such. $53 billion a year at the pump? 101 million metric tons of Co2?
Go read this awesome article about 28 reasons to encourage home businesses and folks working at home…
http://undress4success.com/telework-pros-cons/
Well… just thought I would add my two cents… I was thinking about it this morning. Thought I would share with everyone my thoughts about it all.
And of course, one of the best things????
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