Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!
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My experience of working from home, particularly if you’re running your own business, is it’s a great idea to keep a log of the time you spend working, and how long your different tasks take. I think a lot of people working for themselves are really good at some things and useless/slow at others. If there’s something that’s taking a lot of your time and effort, would it make more sense to pay someone else to do it? Or can you find some way of doing it less? Can you focus more on your more lucrative clients and shed some of the others?
It’s good to log your breaks and other activities, too, like how long you spend doing housework. It’s easy to spend potentially-productive time cleaning and tidying the house just because you’re in it. You might find it works better if you put off the menial tasks until later in the day when your brain is tired anyway.
In any case if you have a log you can keep an eye on the big picture, and experiment with structuring your day in different ways.
One thing I’ve never known how to deal with is phonecalls from family and friends when I’m attempting to get stuff done. I suppose ideally you’d let the answerphone take all calls and then call back at a more suitable time, but in practice it’s hard! It’s so nice to hear from people when you’re home alone.
And likewise with emails. Answering email, even just work-related email, can be so disruptive. Perhaps you need to set certain blocks of time aside for doing email, has anyone out there managed to do that?
ETA: what Russell says about exercise, and generally getting out of the house sometimes: +1
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Are you switching on your computer before your coffee machine?
Both are very rarely switched off. It's not good for them, you know?
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Sacha, in reply to
That link has made my day Josh!
+1
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Islander, in reply to
Chairs – absolutely right Russell.
I had a Formway Life chair for nearly a decade, until the fabric back gave way & the moulded armrests cracked* – so I replaced it with an Aeron. The Aeron is guarenteed for a decade, was expensive but hey! I spend up to 12 hours a day sitting down…*Formway were absolutely marvellous when I asked if it could be repaired. Yes, no worries – you get it to a point where a freight company can pick it up, and we’ll do the rest. My lovely Life was renewed with a new back, new armrests, & a general tune-up. And here’s the kicker – neither the repairs nor the freight (from Whataroa to Auckland and back to Oamaru**) were charged for! Formway, I love you!
**Oamaru? I spend quite a bit of time over the hill at my mother’s home, and the Life is now the computer chair there.
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Andre Alessi, in reply to
And likewise with emails. Answering email, even just work-related email, can be so disruptive. Perhaps you need to set certain blocks of time aside for doing email, has anyone out there managed to do that?
A significant part of my work day is actually email-based, so I need to be checking it constantly throughout the day. What I do is only check my work emails, never my personal emails. I don't have a landline phone though (well, I do, but I never plug it in because the only people with that number are telemarketers) so i don't worry about personal calls-the majority of the calls I recieve during the day are work-related, and I can always pull the "I'm sorry, could you call the office line instead?" routine if it's taking up too much time.
For context, I work from home as part of a team with a largely discrete amount of work each day that needs to be done, and with a virtual desktop that effectively lets me do the same things I do from my work PC. Obviously that makes my situation a little different from many other posters.
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Re. chairs, this got me thinking recently about my own workspace arrangements. I'm cycling less and less recently because of time, weather and health, so the more passive exercise I can get in, the better.
Also, I just realized another salient fact about my abortive attempts to study at home - I had barely any internet then! No Facebook, no Twitter, and especially no PAS. I'd be totally doomed now.
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I worked from home for a year, and found it was hard to get started (do dishes, hang out washing, mow lawn, quick trip to supermarket) and even harder to stop - I'd keep thinking about a project and end up working on it after dinner. I was on my own all day, and ignoring my family in the evenings. It's good to be able to walk out of work and close the door behind you.
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Protip for those working in the fringe suburbs. Generator has drop in rates that are $23/week. It is a really nice space and spending a couple of afternoons a week in there seems like a great plan. I'm currently only 1 day a week at home but spent a bunch of time in the last working from home. My thought pretty much echo what everyone else says:
* Get a good chair (I've got a Aeron - 10 year warranty, super comfy)
* Get out of the house - Just make sure you have at least one errand to run each day, even if it is just posting a letter.
* Don't put off the work you really should be doing. Make those calls that you know you need to make.
* Enjoy it.Glen
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Sue,
if it feels like work is taking over your life, time yourself, you may find you are working longer hours than you need to.
fresh air even if life is giving you the shittiest day in the weather world, get outside even if you only walk round the house a couple of times
sometimes people's best work is created and sparked by talking to others so make sure you do that, make sure you have 'water cooler' moments as scheduled coffees.
find out ways to stay connected with the people you work with, online chat becomes your friend that way, so those questions you used to walk down to the other end of the office or over your computer to ask are easily done. Also those parts of the day where you asked people how their weekends/ projects were doing, online chat is good for that as well.
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Get a dog. Take it for walk before you start work, and after you decide to finish work. In between bounce ideas off it. Gives you compulsory exercise and makes an ideal way to punctuate day's work; also provides work companion who's not going to be too challengiing conversation-wise
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Lilith __, in reply to
make sure you have ‘water cooler’ moments as scheduled coffees
For a while I had a flatmate who also worked from home. We were at opposite ends of the house, but we'd meet from time to time in the kitchen getting food and drinks for ourselves, and have a quick chat. It cheered us both up a lot!
If you know anyone living nearby who works from home, see if you can get together sometimes. I've found the sense of isolation one of the hardest things about working at home. Email and internet chat are OK, but actually seeing people gives me more of a buzz.
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Lilith __, in reply to
Don’t put off the work you really should be doing. Make those calls that you know you need to make
I used to really hate calling clients who hadn't paid their accounts on time and I would put off calling them, or not do it at all. Then one day I decided I was being silly, and I needed to treat it just like any other task, so I would make a list and sit down and do all those calls at once. And I made a point of never saying I really needed the money, even though I did. I would just say I was calling regarding my invoice dated -/- and it'd be nice to get that sorted out. And then I'd give them a week and repeat if they still hadn't paid. And I found calling was hugely more effective than posting reminders, which usually had no effect at all. I once had a client ring me, angry because I "hadn't said anything" about an unpaid bill gong back some months: in fact I had written three times.
It's so easily to take these things personally, if people don't pay or don't treat you well, but it's pointless to get upset about it. The only thing to do is to get what you're owed, and it they go on being difficult, consider not dealing with them again.
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Sara Bee, in reply to
Is that the "Life" chair, or similar, Russell?
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I would like to nominate myself as The Least Productive Person To Ever Work From Home. I am easily distracted by pretty much everything, I have virtually no self-discipline, and at the moment I am additionally stymied by a miniscule work area which has absolutely no privacy. Basically, without having a strict deadline I will let a project languish in the ether until finishing it would be of no use to anyone. I have now instituted a ‘when do you want this done by?’ question rule for every single thing I’m given to do. My one saving grace is that once I eventually get down to doing something, I am reasonably speedy, and I can cobble stuff together well enough by any given deadline.
I think, in other words, that I am The-Anti-Lucy’s-Husband. :)
ETA: I wrote this post instead of searching for articles in a database. Heh.
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Every so often I consider doing some distance learning (both because many things I'm interested in are only offered that way and because most things don't fit neatly around kids' school hours) but, as someone who has never found the middle ground between total pissing around and absolute tunnel vision, I'm pretty sure it would all go horribly wrong in very short order.
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And whatever you do, do not spend too much time nyaning.
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YMMV but I've found kids invaluable for getting up in the morning, and knocking off in the evening. This is, however, because my wife and I have made a point of ensuring their lives are quite structured, especially concerning sleep time. So at 5pm, we eat together, that gets me out of the office.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
there's our family work-from-home secret
Also helps to not worry too much about the staying sane thing, it is a thesis you are expected to lose touch with the real world.
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Andre Alessi, in reply to
I don't know, kids seem like a pretty expensive alternative to an alarm clock.
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Isabel Hitchings, in reply to
I don’t know, kids seem like a pretty expensive alternative to an alarm clock.
And it's a bit of a crap-shoot as to whether you'll get ones whose body clocks suit your preferred work schedule or not.
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BenWilson, in reply to
And it's a bit of a crap-shoot as to whether you'll get ones whose body clocks suit your preferred work schedule or not.
Yes, I'd be amazed if it continues like this into their teen years.
I don't know, kids seem like a pretty expensive alternative to an alarm clock.
Ironically, the only alarm clock used in the house is in their room. It's a "must not rise before x oclock" kind of alarm.
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James Butler, in reply to
I don’t know, kids seem like a pretty expensive alternative to an alarm clock.
Unreliable too. My daughter would sleep until 10 every day if possible; my son gets up at 7, but he knows that if he wakes us his unencumbered computer time is over for the day.
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Alarm clock? Kids? Try a cat which is very insistent on being fed at 6 AM - will wake both you and the dog...
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I was rather more surprised that I probably out to have been to discover that when night owls breed the result is more night owls. Ask me how hideous school mornings are around here.
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Andrew G, in reply to
I'm exactly like you in this respect, Danielle. If i don't have a deadline it doesn't get done; if I do it gets done really close to the deadline.
I read a book a couple of years ago by Tom Hodgkinson called "How to be idle" and I've not looked back. The wierd thing is though, despite myself, I seem to somehow get stuff done and keep things ticking over.
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