‘Too long’ can mean a few hours of struggling with a piece of work, an hour of guilty procrastination, or a minute or two spent reading about other people’s achievements. From the dining table room table or spare bedroom it can quickly start to appear that other people ‘out there’ are cleverer, better connected, lavishly funded and possessed of a dauntingly impressive client list.

Our own horizons and ambitions shrink proportionately – how can we, with our family commitments and our small local clients, possibly compete? By squeezing that time alone to the absolute minimum, I’d say from my own experience.

This time last year I was co-organising The BIG Jelly with Jan Minihane and Fay Easton. It took far more time and energy than any of us anticipated and we experienced setbacks throughout the six months of planning, in fact right up to the day itself. There were many occasions when I wanted to cancel, but regular contact with Jan and Fay kept my spirits up and fortunately there was never a time when all three of us were down at the same time! The event was a huge success and I think all of us were thrilled and amazed by what we’d managed to achieve.

So I believe the best way to achieve your potential when you work from home is to stay connected, whether it’s through coworking, Jelly, networking or forming partnerships with other small businesses. Yes, it means drawing on skills we don’t have to use if we pursue the solitary life, but it also means the opportunity to learn both from other people and what we’re really capable of.

PS As usual this post is written because I need to hear it

Many of us who are home or mobile workers are doing something we are passionate about. We have given up jobs that failed to fire us up in order to freelance or set up a small business that uses a talent. In my own experience, I don’t feel I’m “working” in the same sense I was when I was employed; I am simply expressing myself in a way that feels natural, so working at what would traditionally be considered odd hours is not particularly a problem.

Despite this, after a while I started to feel that I could be more creative and productive if I chose my work hours more carefully and actively planned to get out of the house. I found that meeting people, and not necessarily people connected with my business, gave me a boost that never happened at my desk. I therefore pop out to meet a friend for coffee these days at whatever time suits us both.

I’ve come to believe that successful home working means creating your own schedules, regardless of the conventional 9 to 5. The most creative home and mobile workers learn to switch on and off at any time in order to meet deadlines and – more importantly – give their brains a break and fuel their imaginations.

This ability only seems to come with experience. Most new home workers stick to their old office patterns for a while before becoming more aware of their freedom. I’m interested in this way that work is developing and how the boundary between so-called work and leisure is blurring.

How do you mix up your time? Does it feel different from what you have done before?

This post was first published on www.workshifting.com, the site for people who work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and their homes every bit as much as the office.

Don’t let doubts like these put you off, as coworking can both brighten up your usual routine and give you a supportive network – without requiring you to go to any events!

Here are some tips to help you acclimatize to coworking:

Check out the space – If you’re lucky enough to have a choice of coworking spaces, check out each one (they often offer a free trial) for factors such as facilities, atmosphere, noise and levels of interaction. Choose the one most suited to your business requirements, personality and whether you simply want another place to work or to become part of a community.

Introduce yourself straightaway – As it can be awkward to do so later when you’ve been working alongside people for a while. Take in some snacks to hand round if you’re a bit shy about doing this and not only will you get to meet everybody but you’ll be guaranteed instant popularity.

Take headphones – If you prefer working in silence you might be distracted at first by people moving around the space and talking on the phone or face to face. Bring in headphones so you can play your own music or one of the white noise apps; do try not to hum along!

Start with easy tasks – If you’re worried about being distracted, at first just take along some routine work that doesn’t require massive concentration. It’s the ideal time to do that computer housekeeping you’ve been meaning to get round to, or research to keep up with your industry. You will adapt to being surrounded by activity and gradually be able to introduce jobs needing more application.

Learn the phone policy – Make sure you know the policy on dealing with phone calls and follow it. That may mean leaving the room to take a call or simply keeping your voice down. It shows consideration if you put your phone on the Meeting setting so that your colleagues don’t have to listen repeatedly to your ring tone.

Chat a bit – Don’t feel guilty about spending time chatting and view it instead as relationship building. You’ll be amazed how much information and advice emerges from these casual exchanges and they can give you enough inspiration to last the rest of the week. And you never know who might be a potential partner – one of your coworkers might be actively looking for just your skills.

The great thing about coworking is that you can choose how much or how little you want to participate, and slot it into your routine where it fits best. Good luck in finding your own perfect balance for maximum happiness and efficiency, and I’d love to hear your own tips for acclimatising.

This post was first published on www.workshifting.com, the site for people who work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and their homes every bit as much as the office

Our special guest was Clare Flynn Levy, a hedge fund manager until having her first baby converted her to the delights of flexible working. Clare is now the MD of Flexpaths, providing software to help organisations manage flexible working, and the founder of the Equilibrant Network for senior executives interested in flexible work. She was the perfect guest, and informed and entertained us equally with her experiences of combining work and home life.

It was interesting to see how, although we all share the challenges of procrastination while working mainly from home, people vary enormously in their response to it and how they overcome it. One of my principle beliefs about working at home successfully is that each individual has to find the best way for themselves, and so reading prescriptive articles (that you must have a separate home office, for example) is not necessarily helpful.

The great thing about these monthly groups is the opportunity to hear about different ways of doing things, while feeling encouraged by realising that the challenges – which we often feel are ours alone – are in fact shared.

One of the attendees, Claire Melvin of Claire’s Cakes, brought along some cute mini cupcakes for us, some with my house logo in green icing, which was a lovely thought. And I didn’t notice anybody procrastinating about eating one!

I’ve subsequently seen a photo of Eva Takacs’ newly cluttercleared workspace and will post it soon on the Home Office page. Eva, the founder of The Vent Service, was bemoaning the untidy state of her sofa, where she works with her laptop, at the first two groups, but now she has transformed it. Not only is the group an inspiring night out, but it gets good results too!

Catherine Raynor explained how she had turned around her thinking on home working from the belief she had no room in her flat to putting a glass desk in her bedroom. Francesca recommended Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy as a way of avoiding procrastination and getting dreaded jobs out of the way early in the day.

Fay told us how much more productive she is on the days she does a two-mile morning walk, inspired by Darwin’s belief that our brains work best when we’re walking. Kish agreed that missing her meditation in an attempt to save time was actually counter-productive.

Christina said that having fallen into the trap of wearing sweatpants too often she’s now aware how important it is to look and feel business-like. Many of us had stories of feeling guilty when we’re not working at our desks in the conventional 9-5 routine, and wondering why that should be when we can work at night if we want.

Like Jose, we resolved to enjoy using our time the way it suits us and to shake off those guilty pangs. Eva, Cassandra and her mum Anne are going to check out Jelly, and Richard resolved to open a Twitter account.

So plenty of inspiration flying around in just two hours, and I’m looking forward to hearing how we’ve all got on at the next home working evening meet-up on Thursday 21 July. As Cherry says ‘It is a great way of feeling encouraged just by hearing that others have similar challenges as your own.’ Hope to see you there – I’ll let you know when booking opens.

Facebook, on the other hand, feels to me like a sprawling mass of ever-expanding stuff, most of it of no interest whatsoever. I’ve had no instruction in using it and haven’t really grasped who sees what and which bits of information go where. I rarely look at my Profile wall – I just don’t have time and can do without another opportunity to procrastinate. Please excuse me if you’ve contacted me and had no response – I’m not ignoring you, it’s just that I probably haven’t even found what you’ve sent, don’t know how to respond or have done it wrong. Every time I start to feel I should get some help, something happens like the recent uproar about tagging photos, and I think rude thoughts about the sheer arrogance of the youths manipulating us and resolve to have as little to do with it as possible.

I should get more training on Linkedin as well. From the comments I’ve heard it seems many of us do little with it apart from occasionally sending off a flurry of invitations to connect and guiltily posting an overdue contribution to a group. I am happy to connect with you if we have connected on or offline. It seems rather pointless to connect with somebody who is a total stranger and my least favourite communications come from people sending the standard connect message who claim to be my friend, when I’ve never heard of them. At least tell me why you want to connect.

As for Youtube, my resolve earlier in the year to film regular vlogs has been hit by the persistent humming of the microphone, a problem that was supposed to be have been resolved. I can’t spare the laptop going off into Apple hospital again, and so vlogs have slipped down the list.

So for now my major efforts are reserved for Twitter, which has been a rich source of fascinating people and information. But I’m open to persuasion and no doubt I’m missing all kinds of tricks – how can I get the best out of social media?

I’ve got together with the lovely people at Central, the new workspace in Bloomsbury, central London, where home-based workers can ‘meet, eat, work and be inspired’. Central are hosting my new monthly event How to Work from Home, starting on Thursday 23 June from 7 to 9 pm.

The plan is to share face-to-face the kind of information provided on this site, and to give home workers the opportunity to get together to chat about triumphs and tribulations. I’m doing this in London because I’m there regularly for meetings, as are many other home workers, and of course it’s within easy reach for many people.

I’ll start off with a talk or workshop on a common challenge or topic of interest to home workers. (I’m thinking staying connected, procrastination, home office setups, that kind of thing). I’ve always found that just getting away from my home office and talking to other people is the very best way to re-energise, so there’ll be plenty of time to meet and chat with people. I hope that by Thursday evening you’ll feel you deserve an evening out, especially as it will give you a renewed appreciation for home working!

If you’re already a member of Central then you get free entry, and if not, it’s just £10 plus booking fee. It will be a great chance for you to come along and have a look at what’s on offer at Central, and you don’t have to live locally to get value from being a member – I’ve joined so that I can stop tramping the streets to find somewhere to work on my trips to the capital.

Tickets are limited so book your place now, and I look forward to meeting you in June. Let me know if you plan to come along and have suggestions for topics you’d like to cover. I can hardly wait!

I find that a big disadvantage of spending time alone is the danger of losing perspective. The lack of exposure to other people’s ideas means my own thoughts and opinions get rather too well reinforced. For example, I remember being very motivated by Harvey Mackay’s book Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty and particularly struck by his exhortation not to ‘say no for the other guy’. In other words, never assume you can’t ask somebody something, don’t talk yourself out of a possibility by assuming they will say no.

I took this on board for a while but over the months I’ve slipped back into believing my own assumptions. Ever since my book about working from home was published two years ago, I’ve been meaning to ask a few people to put a review on Amazon for me. I know they like and recommend the book, they’ve said so, but somehow the moment passed and it seemed awkward to do it so long afterwards. I kept putting it off, saying no for the other guy, until my publisher nagged me about it a couple of weeks ago.

It’s weird what you’ll keep putting off until someone else asks you to do it, isn’t it? I sent a couple of emails and immediately got a cheery reply – ‘Of course I’ll post a review, loved the book etc etc.’ And the review appeared a few minutes later. I haven’t heard from the other recipient, but maybe they’re just busy. They either will, or they won’t, but at least now there’s an equal chance they will!

Assumptions – don’t you just hate the way they come crawling up without you even noticing, until they’ve taken up full-time residence and it needs a big push to get rid of ‘em?

What assumptions have you conquered to become a more effective home worker?

This post was first published on www.workshifting.com, the site for people who work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and their homes every bit as much as the office

I changed my mind recently, as I’m currently on Daniel Priestley’s Key Person of Influence programme and as a way of preparing for joint ventures and partnerships he encourages us to pick up the phone and invite someone we’d like to know to meet up for coffee. The people I wanted to meet are all in London so I went up for a couple of days – and lots of coffee!

I was blown away by how much energy and inspiration I got just by talking to people who have clever ideas and run successful businesses, and I’m sure the investment will repay me many times over. I’m so convinced of that I’ve made a resolution to repeat the trip regularly.

I was recounting all this to Nick Williams and he replied, ‘Ah yes, Barbara Sher says that isolation is the biggest killer of dreams.’ I had only vaguely heard of Barbara Sher, but those few words hit me right between the eyes.

It is a fact of life that left too long in its own company (and everyone has their own limit) the human brain seems to circle inward on itself, making horizons narrow and possibilities disappear. The danger is that the process is so imperceptible that you may not even realise it’s happening until something happens to bring you up sharp.

My resolution for 2011 is not to let my dreams be killed stone-dead by too much time on my own, tempting though that may be. They need to get out there just as much as I do, encounter other thoughts and ideas, and start to find expression in the big, wide world.

This post was first published on www.workshifting.com, the site for people who work out of coffee shops, hotels, airports and their homes every bit as much as the office.

The BIG Jelly was the idea of Jan Minihane, my Jelly friend and the founder of Shropshire Jelly, who was so thrilled at the collaborations that came out of her local Jellys that she wondered what wonderful things might happen if home workers, freelancers and micro business owners from all over the UK met up for the day.

She also wanted to tell more people about Jelly and how simple it is to start, with the ultimate aim of a Jelly within reach of every home worker in the UK.

But obviously nobody would bother to travel to a central point for a national Jelly when they’ve got one much closer, so the day had to be really special. The Jelly team (me, Jan and Fay Easton of Enterprise HQ in Coalport, which hosts Jan’s Jelly) have planned a day for all small businesses that is not only Jelly, a space with free wi fi where you can catch up with work and emails, but also all of the following:

3 inspirational speakers – Louise Findlay-Wilson of PR Pro
Emma Jones of Enterprise Nation & Bitsy
Daniel Priestley of Triumphant Events – all well-known champions of small business

A choice of breakout sessions run by experts:
Home Working Wisdom
The Money Go Round
Demystifying Social Media
Marketing for Micro Businesses
Setting up & Running a Jelly
Website/SEO Clinic

And:
Mini expo
Refreshments provided throughout the day from coffee and Danish on arrival to brown bag lunch and cookies, and tea and coffee all day
Event bag with useful content to take away
Special rates for overnight accommodation at host venue, 4* QHotels Telford
Plenty of time for meeting new people in the uniquely friendly Jelly atmosphere

The BIG Jelly is for all micro and small business owners, freelancers, home workers, coworkers, new start-ups, business advisers, workhub operators, business support agencies, government ministers and anyone interested in the future of small and home business, whether you have heard of Jelly or not!

Some people have asked why The BIG Jelly isn’t free, when one of the main principles of Jelly is that it’s free to attend. Well, we’d have loved to bring you all this for nothing, but with the economy the way it is, it simply isn’t possible to cover the costs of a national event through goodwill and sponsorship alone. Even the big blue chip companies have tightened their belts. The people and organisations supporting us have been extremely generous and that’s how we’ve been able to keep the ticket price to £50 + VAT if you book before 28th February 2010, and £75 + VAT thereafter.

The BIG Jelly is a not-for-profit event and so we don’t have a big marketing and PR budget. You will soon be reading about the day in the press, but it would be a huge help if home workers and small businesses can create a strong word-of-mouth buzz through Twitter, Facebook and your personal contacts.

Wherever you are in the UK or the world, whether you can come to The BIG Jelly or not, we would be so grateful if you can start talking about the day both on and offline. The hashtag is #BIGJelly, and more information and booking is at www.uk-jelly.org.uk

Thank you so much if you can support us in making this day a huge success and helping to spread the many benefits of Jelly throughout the UK. I really hope to see you there!

Best wishes
Judy