Notions on Working At Home: What I Did Wrong and How You Can Learn From My Mistakes

I've just completed a week of really intense "project hopping" and so it was extremely timely that I happened upon 2 great posts last night which helped me so that I can avoid this in the future. The first post is by Jason Fried at Vitamin on how to keep distractions at bay, and the second is by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger addressing the pros and cons of working at home.

Now first I have to say to you...I hate project hopping.  This is when you start ONE project (with the hope of maybe...just maybe completing it) but somehow you are distracted from that by a phone call, email, emergency, or need which causes you to have to drop project #1 and now address project #2.  To make matters more fun...perhaps another phone call, email, IM or text message comes in which causes you to have to now drop project #2 and deal with new project #3.  Project hopping sucks.  You can't complete a thought and details that would be addressed if you were, as Jason Fried says, "in the zone" now have to be picked up and renegotiated at another day or time.  It then takes time to get yourself back into that zone where the clear and concentrated thoughts take place. Clearly this is unproductive even though you are working your butt off.

I grant you that this type of madness happens in the office place as well as the home office. So how do we deal with it?  As Jason points out in his article How To Shut Up and Get To Work, "People need uninterrupted time to get things done."  That sounds pretty obvious doesn't it?  But let me tell you, often this concept goes totally by the wayside. Getting and staying "in the zone" is extremely important for creative people who need to follow the threads of a thought or idea during the creative process.  An interruption in that process can mean the end of a brilliant idea or inspiration. Jason offers some good advice for setting up periods of time during the day to just do your work. For instance, working for several hours early in the morning or late in the evening, shut off the phones, turn off the email notification, sign off from the IM, put your head down and get to work.  You can also institute productivity hours between 9am and 1pm or 10am and 2pm and tell your clients and associates that this is productivity time when you are working on their projects...I bet they might be pretty supportive of this.

While working at an office brings its own trials and tribulations, working from the home office can often find you leaving it for meetings and errands.  Meetings can take a huge chunk of time out of the day of the work at home entrepreneur. Get ready time, travel time, meeting time...before you know it you're not back in the office until 3:30. To remedy this, I instituted "out days".  Two days a week I schedule all my around town stuff.  Meetings, post office, errands and banking are done on Tuesdays and Thursdays, leaving three or four (or five?) days to be present in the office.

Comments on Jason's post are also terrific and lend tips and ideas for dealing with distractions.

Darren Rowse, at ProBlogger, writes recently on The Work at Home Entrepreneur.  His post is positive in tone and lists the favorable elements of working from home but also discusses the downside associated it.

Here I'll list Darren's thoughts, and those of his fellow blogger Dominic Foster (in bold); and I have added my own experiences in green.

The Pros:

1. Flexibility:  Yes, absolutely one of the high end benefits of working at home.  Working at home lets you choose your own hours. One of the great benefits of working at home for me was because when my sons were young I was able to be home for them when they got home from school. This was extremely important to me and something I obviously wouldn't have been able to do had I been working a 9-5 job.
2. Productivity:  As Darren states, the potential of productivity is high and higher still if you institute Jason's advice above.
3. Maintain sanity:  Hmm..Well I don't know about this one.  This thought comes from Dominic Foster and while he makes a good point about avoiding office politics, I'd have to say things get pretty insane around here. There is also the concept listed in cons below, which tend to blur work and home making things a bit more challenging.
4. Save Money: There are certain tax deductions for office expenses, of course. And there are no more of those lunch expenses or coffee break purchases.  Wardrobe costs and gas costs are reduced as well.

The Cons:

1. Loneliness:  This was never a factor for me with one exception...being able to bounce ideas off fellow designers or being able to troubleshoot problem items with a in-house partner is very much missed.  I have a pretty nice group of what I call "3 dimensional friends", I have my boys and I have a steady stream of "virtual friends" but almost all problems that come up during the day are solved by you, single-handedly.
2. Blurring of work and home:  This is definitely a factor, but I love what I do for a living and therefore it has become a lifestyle for me. In my case, it is always more difficult to break away from work than it is for me to be distracted by home issues.  Clearly this isn't good either and has earned me the name of "workaholic", but as a single mother, working at home is what pays the bills.  If I don't work, the bills don't get paid so the long hours are necessary because yes... (1) I run my own business and (2) working at home means there is no guarantee for steady income.
3. Distractions:  Ohhh yeah.  As stated above, there are a ton of distractions. But the ability to multi task at home is incredible. I can throw in a load of laundry and come back upstairs to the office and work while my washing machine is running.  Now that I'm armed with Jason's good advice, this con should be reduced significantly. Right?
4. Always on Call:  This is a con I'm adding to the list. I'm not sure if this is something just experienced by me, by those who work for themselves or by all workers in general but it seems that I am always "on call".  I've received phone calls on my cell phone from clients as early as 7:15am and as late as 10:45pm. I've gotten calls while I'm at the grocery store, a child's birthday party, dinner out with a friend and on days when I'm trying desperately to take the day off to be with my loved ones. That nasty project hopping situation rears its ugly head again. Simply turning the cell phone off on a Sunday or after 7pm at night is not always possible and hoping that clients will get the message and not call you at 11pm is clearly not an option. What does one do about this?  Get 2 cell phones...one for work only and one for personal? Not answer work related calls after a certain hour...yes but sometimes there are situations which require you do to so. Tell me your thoughts on this and place a comment below...I'm dying for some sleep here!

Comments

[Vladimir Orlt]

another for my potential-home-business-to-be pro/con collection... thanks

I would also like to limit 'home working hours'... might even be willing to forego some business for this.

Instead of 2 cell phones, how about call display? And/or can't the latest phones automatically screen out some #s at some times of day? There's a business idea...

[Lisa]

I don't know if the latest phones automatically screen some numbers out...boy, wouldn't that be wonderful! Since writing this post I've done a couple of things which have helped a lot. I created "calling hours" and posted them here on the blog and on my voice mail message. This helped but there are still some "emergencies" which try to sneak in. I did get a second cell and although I have incurred another monthly bill (Booo!) I consider it a sanity fee and feel much better and freer these days. (There is something so liberating about leaving that business cell at home...Gives me a whole new attitude) The calling hours provide me with about 8-10 "productivity hours" per week...not really enough but at least I'm making some progress here. Good luck in your at home endeavors.