successful home working
Posts tagged interviews
WorkSnug podcast on working from home
75 months ago
On my last trip to London, for the How to Work from Home – The Inside Guide meet-up, San Sharma, the community manager of WorkSnug, invited me along to The Snug Office. I was delighted to discover the office is in Limehouse, not far from where I was staying, and even had plans to walk there along the Thames Path.
But it was not to be – it started to rain just before I set out, so I took the DLR and got off at Limehouse, confident I had the route well planned. En route I spotted a path by the canal that looked much more scenic than the main road and appeared to lead more directly to my destination. Bad idea. I somehow ended up walking in a circular route around the street I was looking for, getting rather wet in the process.
I was finally rescued by a passer-by who saw me peering at my A-Z. Good thing, as Dod St has no street sign so otherwise I may well have passed it by. There seems to be a moral in my sad story, but I can’t quite think what it is.
I finally squelched into San’s office (and very nice it is too) where he made me tea, fed me croissants and let me gently steam. There was a point to all this soggy urban tramping – here’s the podcast we made about working from home and where to go when home is less appealing. I think you can tell we were having fun as we made it:
You may have come across San wearing his other hat at Bitsy’s #watercoolermoment on Twitter, where he presides over an unruly bunch of home workers at a virtual coffee break from 11 to 12 each weekday.
Come and meet him in person at the next How to Work from Home group at Central on 29 September, when he’ll be passing on the benefits of being a very early adopter and explaining the best tech tools to save time and money in language even the least techie home worker – that’s me – can understand!
Working from home interview, part 2
31 year ago
Last month I blogged about my interview with Margaret Adams on professional freelancers working from home. Margaret works with professionals to help them attract more business and win more contracts. Here is the rest of the conversation, from home insurance to supermarket shopping!
Are your mortgage and house insurance affected if you start to work from home?
Whoever it is who has an interest in your home, tell them what you’re doing. Then, if something happens further down the line, you’re prepared. If you have regular business visitors to your home your insurers might ask you to pay more for your insurance, for example, so tell them about your plans.
Remember to tell your neighbours you are now working from home – they will probably like the idea of someone being in all day. It’s better for security, for every one in the area.
There’s no problem with telling your clients that you work from home these days either. There was a little bit of a stigma attached to working from home in the past. It’s not like that now. That view’s old hat.
Now, home working has an aspirational element to it. More people want to do it. In the case of people working in the creative industries, or coaches, it’s almost expected that your home will be your base.
What tips would you like to offer people just starting to run a business from their home?
My first tip is that you shouldn’t pay too much attention to all the advice in the papers about home working. You understand yourself and your own situation best. What suits other people – including your friends and colleagues – won’t necessarily work for you.
I’d also urge you to be kind to yourself, and to rest of your family when you first start working from home. Discuss things with them. Be prepared for it to take a little time to get right. Talk to your partner about who’s going to do the household chores.
On a lighter note I’d encourage you to make sure you’re not hungry when you go food shopping. If the food cupboard’s full when you’re working at home, you’ll eat more and gain weight. Say “no” to those extra items when you’re shopping. If there’s nothing extra in the house, you can’t eat it.
Working from home interview
41 year ago
I was delighted to get a call recently from Margaret Adams, who works with professionals to help them to attract more business and win more contracts. Margaret is also the author of no less than four books and many training manuals and articles. We had a chat over the phone on the subject of professional freelancers who work from home and here is an excerpt from her transcript of our conversation, which you can read in full on Margaret’s website.
How can people working at home motivate themselves?
‘It’s important to develop a structure for the day and a routine around family commitments. Plan the day ahead rather than having to figure out what you’re going to do first thing every morning.
‘Also be prepared to vary your approach if you get bored. Adapt your schedule to suit yourself and your preferences.
‘Allow yourself to take a break, too. When you’re working on something important, let yourself stop. Pop out at least once during the day. You’ll regret it, if you don’t, because after working on something for a long time, you can lose your perspective on things and just not work effectively.
‘Don’t worry about not doing enough work. Most professionals have a conscience that will bring them back to their work, if they take a break and go out.’
How do you turn off from work when your home is your workplace?
‘If you have family commitments, then there will be times when you have to switch off. You have to deal with your responsibilities at particular times.
‘It’s harder if you don’t have these sorts of commitments. However, if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you can allow yourself to work on into the evening. It’s not a problem if you work late. That just means you can also give yourself permission to get up later the next morning. You don’t have to work a nine to five day.’
I’ll be posting more of our conversation soon, and in the meantime both Margaret and I would be interested to hear your own views and experiences.
Wondering whether home working is for you?
101 year ago
A while ago I promised to show you some work by illustrator Ian Dicks, who shared his quirky favourite home working item back in August. This post was inspired by Ian’s cartoon, which, like all successful humour, contains an element of truth. No, you may not need an interview to become self-employed or to start working flexibly, but you’d better quickly get used to looking in the mirror and asking yourself some searching questions!
The freedom of home working is something many people dream of, but the reality is that it is much more than a change of location. Away from the traditional “office” environment there is nobody to tell you what to do, when to do it, how, why and so forth. You are firmly in charge and the way to succeed is to develop a strong sense of self-awareness. Fortunately you can easily find some useful clues in the way you work now by asking yourself some pertinent questions, such as:
* Do you work alone or as part of a group?
* How much interaction is there between you and your colleagues?
* Do you organise your own work schedule?
* Set your own deadlines?
* Work in a quiet or noisy office?
* Can you work independently or do you rely on others for support or other skills?
* Do you like to bounce ideas off other people before committing yourself?
* How long does it take you to switch off after work?
* Are you happy with your own company?
* Do your family and friends have opinions on the best way for you to work?
These questions, and others you will no doubt think of relating to your own circumstances, will help you identify your strong points and the areas you need to think more carefully about. The answers will help you decide important things such as where in the house to set up your home office, how much time you want or need to spend working alone, what kind of support you’ll need and so on.
For instance, if you don’t think you can always work alone, find out where you can go for coworking locally. If you need IT support, get recommendations from people you trust and find someone suitable before you start working from home. Loathe parts of your essential admin work? A virtual PA will help to lighten the load.
So holding up a mirror to your personal likes, habits and needs and asking yourself some tough questions will give you the best possible start to home working, but at least you won’t need to buy a new outfit for the occasion!
Thank you, Ian, for allowing me to use your work and to 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, where this post was first published.
Podcast progress
0I wrote recently in Unexpected Pleasures about how wonderful it is when something good happens that you haven’t had to work or push for. It’s a salutary reminder that life doesn’t have to be a struggle!
I also love it when out of the blue an answer arrives to a question you have been puzzling over and finally let go of out of sheer exasperation of ever finding a solution. It happened today, funnily enough once again via the lovely San Sharma of Enterprise Nation. Last time he put my book about working from home on the EN Amazon wishlist. Today he has enabled us (OK, to be completely honest, my long-suffering IT helpdesk, A) to put two audio clips on the site that have been languishing unheard for months.
You can find them both on the Judy Heminsley page, but in the same spirit of effortlessness, here’s one you can play without any more clicking. It’s a chat with Nick Williams of Inspired Entrepreneur about cleaning, writing a book and the many joys and challenges of working from home. Thanks, San!
In the pod
21 year ago
We’re presently trying to find out where to host some audio clips I want to put on the site, with little progress to date. But I’m pleased to say you can listen immediately to me talking about the challenges of working from home by going to Freelance Advisor, an excellent site full of good advice for anyone already working as a freelancer or contemplating taking the plunge.
The podcast came about as a result of the spontaneous call I made to Radio Bristol after receiving a tweet one snowy morning telling me the subject under discussion was working at home in bad weather. Somehow the editor of Freelance Advisor heard the clip and invited me to do the podcast. And all accomplished sitting at my desk at home – amazing!
