Working From Home
Working From Home
If you are a home-based business owner, count your blessings. You are providing opportunities for yourself and your family that are unavailable to 9 to 5ers. Research also indicates that productivity rises 15% to 25% when work is done at home vs. the office, and self-employed people are more productive than others. (Working from Home, by Paul & Sarah Edwards)
Here are five suggestions for boosting productivity if you work from home.
1. You can’t multitask between work and kids. Set office hours for yourself and arrange for assistance with your children during those hours.
2. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Outsource tasks you don’t have time for or don’t have the desire to do. This is the key to success. Assign housework to family members or outside vendors. Hire professionals like a virtual assistant to support your business.
3. Hire your older children to work with you. You can supervise their work. They will learn more about what you do for a living and be a part of it.
4. Structure your day. You will need self-discipline to focus on only things that contribute to your business during office hours.
5. Take advantage of the flexibility that a home office provides. Set hours that are convenient for you and your family.
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Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Drawing these boundaries is very hard. I really didn’t start my business until my children were in high school. I think it would have been a lot harder when they were little, and I have a lot of admiration for those who launch businesses and manage young children at the same time. It’s tough, especially in this day of cell phones and 24 hour “on call.”
Establishing structure for your day, including when you will be off duty, is critical. A home-based business is sort of always with you, and it is hard to get away from the nagging feeling like you should be working on something at all times.
At the same time, as you say, this type of business has more flexibility than working for someone else, and I think it leads to a lot of creativity and fresh ideas. It’s been a blessing for me. I’m very glad I did (and still do) it!
Seana. I also didn’t start my business until my kids were older, so I didn’t have to manage small kids. The flexibility is great when you work for yourself.
Your suggestions resonate with me as someone who has worked from home for over 30 years.
One of the challenges of being a solopreneur is thinking, “I need or want to do everything myself.” But we know how that goes—not well. So, over the years, I’ve improved on reaching out for support. It takes a village.
I love working for myself for all of the reasons you described.
30 years! Congratulations Linda. I also love working for myself.
It is so important to create a structure for your day when you work from home. I had one of my clients put on a coat, leave the house, and walk around the block so he could signal to his brain that he was “going to work”. This helped him set the tone for the day.
I have no kids to distract me (but also nobody in my family to whom I can delegate), but I do believe in the sanctity of structure. I’ve been working from home for 22+years, and without a fairly firm (but flexible) schedule, it would be too easy to procrastinate or focus on things that were not high priorities. My schedule may be atypical, with more late night hours spent on writing and admin, and very few pre-noon hours, but that flexibility means that when I’m talking with clients, I’m always at my best.
I’m still working on delegating. I need the woodland creatures that help Cinderella and Snow White!
That’s a great idea to get you into work mode.