successful home working
Posts tagged pet hates
Home working in the firing line again
152 months ago
I’m not sure whether to be grateful or not to Alex Johnson, Mr Shedworking himself, for alerting me via Twitter to another blast at home working and home workers.
This time it’s Janet Street-Porter writing in the Daily Mail in the usual ‘I don’t like it so it’s obviously bad for everybody’ strain.
As I’ve been too busy this morning to get round to writing this until after midday, I don’t particularly recognise her description of home workers who ‘log onto the internet, play games, have a bit of a chat online, buy a few dvds or fishing gadgets, and do everything but actually work.’
Is that you? If so, please do share your secret as the rest of us would love to know how it pays the mortgage and supports our families.
Social media – vital for working from home, but…
117 months ago
Social media has only been around a few years and yet I can’t remember what home working life was like without it. Which doesn’t mean I’m enamoured of it all. Do you have a favourite social media site? Mine is Twitter, because as a confirmed minimalist I love its brevity, I started off by attending a day course and so understand everything I need to, and mostly because I feel in control – I know exactly what will happen when I press Send!
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?
Are home workers slackers?
2712 months ago
Thanks to Emma Jones for tweeting me in the direction of a bizarre article about home working in The Daily Telegraph headlined ’8pc of home workers do business in their pyjamas’.
Harry Wallop appears to have used a survey by Nectar Business on which to hang an outdated prejudice that people working from home are in fact siting on their sofas, drinking tea and watching Countdown. The first time I read it I could barely take it in for wondering whether this was some kind of joke. But no, April 1 is still a long way off. My second thought was that some jotted notes that might or might not have had the makings of a proper article had somehow been published inadvertently.
The piece bears no resemblance to my daily routine or that of any home worker I’ve ever come across. I would dismiss it as the ramblings of someone frighteningly out of touch with the way work is changing, but then Marisol of Caradiaz pointed out that this is the kind of thing that makes some employers refuse to consider home working for their staff. Which is much more worrying.
The old pyjamas and watching TV story seems to get trotted out regularly at the slightest mention of home working. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get a party of national journalists along to The BIG Jelly and expose them to some alternative viewpoints? Do you think it’s important to ditch this old-fashioned thinking and is there anything home workers can do about it?
What’s your biggest frustration about working from home?
51 year ago
I arrived home from London at ten o’clock last night with my head full of newly acquired information, lots of ideas – and a full-blown cold that had arrived without warning.
So I’m sitting at my desk wrapped in a fleece blanket, with a box of tissues to hand. I have lots of actions I’d like to get done and a brain about as active as a bowl of porridge, which instead of helping me make progress is getting in the way.
A blocked head is my biggest frustration today and means this post is short and sweet. So over to you – what’s your biggest frustration about working from home?
Home working v house work
221 year ago
Sometimes I meet people who don’t work from home who tell me that if they did, they’d have to make sure the house was clean and tidy before they started work. Mm, well, somehow I think that might change pretty quickly if they ever do work at home.
I tend towards the minimalist so naturally I like to be clutter-free, but I do no more than a quick tidy-up before I start work. My thinking is that I wouldn’t have the time if I was dashing off out to work, and I can do without the extra pressure.
I tend to do jobs around the house to give me a break from the computer and generate some ideas for my writing. I’ve always found that cleaning the bath is a guaranteed way of coming up with new thoughts, but unfortunately we only have a shower in this house and that makes me so cross I let A clean it!
I don’t know what home working chaps will make of this, but it’s my observation that women do seem to juggle more jobs – work, cleaning, shopping, children, keeping in touch with friends etc – in the course of a day. So in this house we now do a fortnightly cleaning blitz together so the jobs are shared.
Do you tend to get landed with the household jobs because you work at home? How do you apportion it out if you both work from home? Oh, excuse me, got to go, I need to make the most of this sunshine and put the washing out…
Rome wasn’t built in a day…
141 year ago
Like many people running a home business doing something they are passionate about, I have the patience of a flea, and nothing ever happens quickly enough for me. Last evening I was complaining to the long-suffering (and fortunately patient) A that my to-do list wasn’t shrinking fast enough. Ideally I would prefer each item to take just a day, I told him, and then I’d feel I was making progress. Yes, do SEO for the whole site, and write a new section for writers working from home, each in just a day.
‘Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day, was it?’ was the answer. Not very original perhaps, but I had to laugh, imagining the Ancient Romans’ to-do list:
Monday – build Rome
Tuesday – conquer all known Western world
Wednesday – conquer all unknown Western world
Thursday – whoops, collapse of empire
The most flattering description of this affliction of impatience is by Barbara Winter, who helps people to be creatively self-employed or ‘joyfully jobless’. Barbara says ‘Impatience is the curse of the visionary’, which is balm to my impatient spirit. Who wouldn’t be seduced by the possibility of being a visionary?
Her phrase also captures the frustration I feel when I’ve had a good idea and I can so clearly see what it’s going to look like when it’s finished, only to realise that, not having attained the art of instant manifestation, a lot of time and effort will be expended before it’s complete.
By the way, having said nothing ever happens quickly enough, I tweeted Barbara to check I was quoting her correctly – and her reply came back immediately! The marvels of Twitter – even quick enough for impatient visionaries! If you like the sound of Barbara, you can follow her on Twitter for regular pithy reminders and links to thought-provoking articles.
OK, time for my next task – now, how far did I get with my SEO yesterday?
