successful home working
Posts tagged work/life balance
Home working neighbours
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We moved to the mill nine months ago and part of the pleasure of living here is the wildlife we spot from our windows – no need even to put on a coat and go outside!
There are no sheep at the moment, they were moved after the ram had done his business, so we’re looking forward to their return with lambs in a couple of months. The chickens are the sole occupants of the field and very straggly some of them are. I keep meaning to find out if they are battery farm retirees. If so it must be a mind-blowing experience to come from a cooped -up existence to all this green freedom.
I have see the occasional fly and ladybird in the house throughout the winter and today there are midges dancing in the sunshine over the mill race. Long may this mild weather last.
A has seen a kingfisher flash past, and enjoys the dippers as they chomp up insects in the wall along the river, but the king of the mill is the heron, pictured here from our kitchen window waiting patiently for fish. It’s used to us now and doesn’t fly away immediately when we leave the house, pausing for a while before flapping languidly away upriver to settle on a treetop and wait for us to leave it in peace. I say king, and we always refer to it as a he for some reason, but it could equally well be a sheron, couldn’t it?
Why are home workers so hard on themselves?
192 months ago
by Judy
in Homeworking dilemmas
I interviewed over 50 home workers when I was doing the research for my book Work from Home, and one of the most striking realisations to come from that research was how hard home workers tend to be on themselves.
When we go out to work we constantly deal with interruptions from colleagues, exchange news and gossip, make coffee, struggle to make the printer work etc – and still go home at the end of the day with a feeling of a job well done.
Yet when we work from home, we want and expect to be productive 100% of the time and unwanted jobs that crop up like uncooperative technology, unexpected phone calls and dealing with glitches all feel like wasted time.
We often feel guilty when we’re not at our desks working during normal office hours and yet the freedom to work odd hours to suit ourselves is one of the reasons we choose to work from home. The old habits cling on after we’ve left the office environment behind, just like cartoon characters keep running after they’ve gone over the cliff!
You may feel you have to be available throughout working hours in case you miss a call from an existing or potential client. But do you expect professionals to be instantly available whenever you call? Of course not, and if they were you’d probably start to worry about how good they are if nobody is using them!
Manage the situation by returning calls promptly and explaining you were in a meeting/on another call/focusing 100% on an important piece of work, and people will respect you for your professionalism and want to work with you.
It can be so tempting to scrub out plans to go and meet a friend or take a walk if someone suggests that time for a meeting or call. But then you can end up wearing yourself out by never freeing up the time to get refreshed and replenished. Stick to your guns and show a little kindness to yourself!
When is home working a bad idea?
123 months ago
by Judy
in Homeworking dilemmas
I was recently talking to a long-standing home worker who’s going through a divorce (unfortunately not an amicable one) and he said something that got me thinking – ‘I need a job’. What he meant was that spending long periods of time alone in his home office was not the best way to deal with all the emotions and upheaval going on in his life.
For me though, working from home was actually a help at the end of my marriage, although admittedly my situation was different in that we were able to agree on all aspects of the parting of the ways.
When I felt down I’d just go to bed for an hour or two. I’m a great believer in the restorative power of sleep to tackle all kinds of ills and it never let me down. I think I was able to come to terms with the massive change in my life quicker than if I’d had to go out to work every day and switch my brain into totally different concerns until after 5pm.
Other people I know have abandoned their home office after the birth of a child and when they felt they needed more input than home working could give them. Are there any times in life when working from home might be a bad idea? Would you go out and get a job, or are there ways to work around it?
If you can work anywhere, how do you ever switch off?
84 months ago
Technology enables us to work remotely in all sorts of places that not long ago would never have been considered suitable – bedrooms, hotels, airport lounges and so on. This has given many people the freedom to ditch the commute and live in a location of their own choosing, but it also brings its own challenges. Chief among those is the danger of being constantly “at work” when there is no clear delineation between on and off time.
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.
Lunchtime for home workers
125 months ago
Make sure you have regular breaks and stop at lunchtime – the received wisdom for all home workers wanting a balanced lifestyle. San Sharma, the community manager of Bitsy, tweets every day just before 1 pm to remind home workers to take a break. And I always tell people exactly that in my talks and workshops…but do I obey my own advice?
No, of course not! It’s tempting to think you can be more productive if you just keep on working, and maybe in the short term you can. If you’re working to an urgent deadline, for example. But it’s not so good when it becomes a habit. I find that if I’m on a roll with work I keep putting off a break, sometimes for so long that I end up starving and resort to biscuits etc because I can’t wait to make something healthy.
Until recently I’d got into the habit of eating at my computer while reading (and sometimes bolting my food in order to wipe my fingers and get back to the keyboard). And then I was told by a nutritionist that I’d absorb the vitamins and minerals in my food better if I relax while eating – and that means leaving my desk.
Then there’s the question of what to eat. Since my consultation I’ve been eating much more healthily – less wheat, dairy and sugar, even – the home worker’s greatest dread, surely – less caffeine. But it takes time to plan and shop to make sure there are always healthy snacks in the house. So much easier to grab a sandwich, and graze on biscuits, crisps and cake in between.
In an ideal world working at home should enable you to eat better. But what happens in practice? Is your home working day one long graze at your desk, or do you make a point of stopping to eat and drink?
More on home office doors
010 months ago
This post was inspired by some chats I’ve been having with people who have recently left corporate life to start their own business from home. It 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’ve noticed that articles giving advice on working from home frequently claim it’s essential to have a separate room so you can close a door on distractions during the working day and then shut work behind you at night. They imply that if you don’t have a spare room you shouldn’t really be thinking about working from home. Is this true?
Whereas some people may prefer this as the ideal way of working, experience and many home workers tell me it most certainly is not essential. Which is fortunate, as the price of property means many family homes are already full to bursting and the cost of acquiring an extra room or two is prohibitive.
So what to do when you want to start working from home? Catherine Raynor told me it was a case of thinking differently about the space she did have. Sharing a London flat with a flatmate, she didn’t want to work in either the kitchen or living room, as those were the rooms for relaxation after work. Nor did she like the idea of working in her bedroom, as business and sleep are such mutually exclusive activities! But then – a brainwave.
She had the brilliant idea to put a desk in front of her bedroom window, to take advantage of the view and keep her back to the rest of the room. Even more cleverly, she chose a glass desk and clears her work away into a wardrobe, newly fitted out with shelves, at the end of the day. The simple see-through desk now ‘disappears’ into the pink curtains at night-time and she gets her bedroom back.
Or you can find a space that’s currently wasted and put it to good use. Stacey Sheppard, a freelance design writer, has created her own research and writing zone by putting a desk under the stairs and pinning pictures and cuttings on the wall. Neat and out of the way, but it instantly spells work-time when she settles down there.
The kind of work you do means you might not need a permanent base at home anyway. Rosie Bray is a photographer who sets up her laptop on the living room table when she needs to do some editing, and the rest of the time is out and about taking pictures. Similarly you may spend a lot of time at meetings, travelling or on clients’ premises.
I’d hate to think that people might be put off working from home just because they don’t have a dedicated office. Even if you do, it may not be the answer for everyone. I’ve met home workers who have spent time and money setting up a nice home office, only to find they hate being there because they feel too cut-off from the rest of the family! As with any other aspect of workshifting, you get the best results if you understand your own needs, even if that goes against the conventional wisdom.
