Run Your Home Like An Office
Renee O’Brien of Pottstown, Pa., was excited to work from home when she became an independent distributor for a women’s slumber-party hosting company in 2005.
But the transition wasn’t as easy as she expected: Friends would call while she was working, assuming she had ample time to chat. And she’d find herself trying to squeeze in household chores like washing dishes during her work hours.
To keep herself in check, she now carefully schedules her work time using Microsoft Outlook’s calendar feature, and keeps an egg timer next to her desk to limit time spent on tasks like phone calls and checking email to 15 or 30 minutes.
“The timer startles me enough to say, ‘OK, enough time on that,’ ” the 43-year-old Ms. O’Brien says.
It’s tempting to treat working from home informally, since nobody’s watching over your shoulder. But that’s an easy way to fall off track, says Alvah Parker, a Swampscott, Mass., career transition coach.
She suggests at-home entrepreneurs write a detailed business plan that includes not just projections for the business itself, but also specifics on how you’ll manage working from home. This includes laying out a regular work schedule and describing in advance how you’ll handle specific scenarios, such as if a friend or relative calls during working hours or your child interrupts during an important phone call. You might even designate a time during the day or evening for household tasks, errands or recreational activities you’d otherwise be tempted to do during work hours.
Be realistic. You don’t want to build a business plan where you’re planning for more work hours than you can handle or ignoring obvious interruptions that are going to detract from your work time. One option: Assume that times when young kids are awake will be less productive, and plan to get the bulk of work done during nap times or when the kids are being watched by someone else.
“Working at home requires you be very disciplined and really know what you have to do and when,” Ms. Parker says. “That’s why the plan is so important.”
Photo from morgueFile.
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