successful home working
Posts tagged Work from Home book
Beware of those sneaky home working assumptions
410 months ago
A home working life can be a life spent largely in the confines of one’s own head, whether at home or travelling to meetings. I recently met someone at a networking event and we were discussing the drawbacks of this much solitude. He said he used to spend hours alone every day in his car and although an introvert by nature, in the end he grew to hate his own company.
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
Lisa’s home office
231 year ago
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Today’s post is by Dallas-based home office expert Lisa Kanarek, the founder of WorkingNaked.com and the author of several books including Working Naked: a guide to the bare essentials of home office life. Lisa is also an interior designer – this is her home office and here is how she created it:
- I started with a cushy, wool rug in black, tan and red. It’s a good idea to start from the ground up. Paint and furniture are easy to find. Finding the right rug in the colors you like and within your budget can be more challenging. The rug fits the overall look of my home so if I ever get tired of it, I can put it in another room.
- Using the rug as a color guide, I went on a quest for the perfect paint color. After trying a few stock colors from Benjamin Moore (my favorite paint company) and not finding exactly what I wanted, I created my own color. Like a mad scientist (minus the insane laugh), I mixed a few colors together and created what I call “Working Naked Gold.”
- Next I bought two bookcases and filled them with books and art projects my sons have made throughout the years. The two-piece bookcases (base and hutch) were available with or without doors. I went with open bookcases to keep me from storing supplies I didn’t need to keep.
- Then I hung pictures and a large metal sculpture on the walls.
- I finished my office by putting a TV in the corner. The day after I added it, I remembered why I’ve never had a TV in an office: I can’t resist watching it. Constantly. The TV is still in my home office but now I watch it only at night when I don’t feel like working but need to finish up some projects.
‘For the past year the old saying “the shoemaker’s kids have no shoes” has hit close to home or rather my home office. Instead of doing anything to improve the look of my work space, I’ve been busy designing clients’ home offices and writing about working from home.
I’m proud to say that my new home office rocks. I love it! Here’s a condensed play-by-play of my home office transformation from ugly to awesome:
Now that I’ve finished creating my home office, there’s only one more thing to do: get to work.’
How did you come to be working from home?
201 year ago
Graham Cornfield (what a wonderful late summer name!) made a remark in his comment on yesterday’s post (What makes home workers happy) that got me thinking. He said about his home working lunchtime – ‘Wow! I wouldn’t have dreamt of this six months ago.’ It made me realise we all have our own home working story.
In my case it was sheer chance. In the 80′s I helped to set up a cleaning business in Bath and running it from home was the obvious way to keep costs down. We bought a little black desk from MFI (remember that black 80′s furniture?), turned our back bedroom into an office and storeroom for cleaning equipment, and we were off. Sometimes I interviewed prospective staff at the dining room table and I recall one particularly pushy sales rep we had to ask not to call, because he’d always turn up when we were trying to relax!
I developed the business over the next 12 years and never considered getting other premises. Having sold the business I did various other things, mostly from home, but didn’t actually realise this common home working theme until I came up with the idea for my book about working from home.
Did you just fall into working from home or did you plan it all beforehand? What were your reasons – did you want more time with your family, get sick of commuting or want to work uninterrupted by colleagues? About 200 words would be ideal to make it the basis of a post, or I can edit accordingly and add a link to your website. Looking forward to hearing your stories!
Knowing me, knowing you – aha!
201 year ago
Last week in the post about turning home working horrors into hurrays, Kyle Newman mentioned that extrovert and introvert home workers probably respond in different ways to the threat of becoming isolated.
Extroverts are generally understood to be outgoing people who like socialising and talking, whereas introverts we tend to think of as shy and retiring. In fact the words come from the Latin for turning outwards or inwards, so an extrovert replenishes their inner energy by turning out, often to other people, whereas introverts turn inwards to their own resources.
Just think about how you would spend your ideal evening after a heavy day’s work. The extrovert makes a beeline for the pub to tell all his friends about the idiots he has to deal with. The introvert looks forward to a quiet evening in, maybe reading or watching TV, alone or with close family.
The home working extrovert needs to be in touch with other people regularly to keep up their motivation and stay inspired. It’s important to recognise this so you can plan meetings as top priority. Home working is much more of a realistic prospect for you now that workhubs, coworking spaces and Jelly events are so accessible.
The more introvert personality may relish the idea of being able to work alone at home without interruption. I enjoy it most of the time but I still have to remember to schedule regular trips out or the horrible downward spiral sets in before I realise what’s happening. I find that one meeting a day is ample so I have plenty of time afterwards for reflection.
This kind of self-understanding is very powerful for home workers. We have the freedom and flexibility to organise our diary in exactly the way that suits us, once we understand our own preferences and habits. And understanding ourselves also helps us to understand the quirks of others and results in those ‘aha’ moments – usually as in ‘Now I know why that person gets on my nerves so much!’
(There’s much more information to help you spot personality traits and different ways of doing things in Chapter 2 of Work from Home).
Hip, hip, home working hurray from me
201 year ago
I’ve been tweeting to ask home workers to share their achievements and breakthroughs, their home working hurrays, but do you know, I’ve not had a single reply yet. You are obviously all far too modest to go broadcasting your success, so I’d better start by blowing my own trumpet and hope you’ll join in!
I quickly checked my tweets on Saturday morning before going out, which is always a bit of a risk as often when you ‘have a quick look’ at the computer on days off you find things you’d rather not see. But I was delighted to find these tweets from Kelly Ward who runs a cleaning business in Telford and has just read my book Work from Home:
‘Finished your brill book on hols,who knew I was an introverted, intuitive, auditory/kinaesthetic type with Crackberry habit!
‘Fab book, lots of tips in a well written and personable manner…enjoyed the read and will pass it onto others’ 
It made my day that Kelly had enjoyed the book and picked up some useful tips and especially that she had identified some of her personality traits and preferences – the ‘introverted, intuitive’ etc bit!
I firmly believe that you only get the best out of working from home if you understand yourself and so know how to tailor your home working life to your own personality and circumstances. Chapter 2 in the book covers these points, but I think it’s about time I mentioned them here too. Come back soon if you want to find out whether you are similar to Kelly or maybe sensing, perceiving or visual, and how this apparently trivial information can help you make more of working from home.
OK, enough preening from me. Who’s going to help me make it Thankful Thursday by celebrating a recent success?
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!
