How To Work Effectively...

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From Home

The idea of working from home can be very different from the reality. The home environment is filled with distractions, stressors and pitfalls that can all have a negative effect on your earning power. If you want to be a successful home worker, you need to know how to avoid those negatives.

It’s amazing (and rather disturbing) just how many distractions there are that can pull you away from your work. The lawn needs mowing, the washing up has to be done, you need to return the phone call from the friend who called two days ago, your desk needs tidying… the list goes on. And it’s a list that can severely damage your earning power if you don’t find a way to conquer it.

Let’s take a look at time first. This shouldn’t be much of a problem, should it? After all, you’ve gained the couple of hours a day you used to spend traveling to and from work, so there’s no real hurry to get started in the morning.

But that’s where the problems can begin. You no longer need to be in the office for 9am every morning. There’s no one to shout at you if you’re late for work anymore. You are your own boss now, and that will require discipline if you are to succeed. True, you don’t need to work from 9am to 5pm anymore if you don’t want to. But you should still have a regular schedule to ensure you get the required amount of work done at the right times. I have a weekly planner I print out a fresh copy of every Monday morning. Regular weekly jobs are pre-printed onto it, and I then write in any work deadlines that I have, plus my tasks for each day.

One advantage of working from home is that you can set your own hours. If you prefer to work late, set your weekly planner up so you have a work plan between, say, midday and 8pm. Or maybe 4pm and midnight, if you really like to stay up late. Your hours can be flexible, but you should find your optimum working hours and try to stick to them where possible. You’ll be more productive if you do.

So much for time keeping. What about interruptions?

Unfortunately, friends and relatives can sometimes misunderstand your intentions when you say you are now working from home. They assume you will now be available to chat on the phone whenever it’s convenient for them to call. And if they happen to be in town, well… an impromptu visit will be just fine. And before you know it, your working week has disappeared in a shower of visitors and phone calls.

The best solution to avoiding phone calls is to have a separate phone line put in to take business calls only, and not to give that number to friends or relatives. Let the answer phone pick up any personal messages on your home phone during work hours, and return any calls once you’ve finished work for the day.

Personal visitors are harder to deter, but the easiest way to make people understand you are not to be disturbed is to hand them a copy of your work schedule once you have set it up, so they will know exactly when you’re unavailable. As for cold callers, the postman, and other door to door people… there’s not a lot you can do to deter them, so you will need to decide whether you will ignore the doorbell, or answer it quickly and send away any salesmen who may come calling. If finances allow, why not set up a camera and intercom so you can see and speak to who’s there without leaving your desk?

So… we have managed to deter a lot of outside distractions. But there are still other far more deadly ones that can scupper your plans to work successfully and efficiently from home. And these come from you.

Let’s start with your workspace. Do you have a room that is dedicated to your business, or do you use part of another room? Being able to organize your workspace is a big challenge, but one that must be met if you want to be as efficient as possible. File away any paperwork that isn’t currently in use, and keep your desk as tidy as you can. If you have a room specifically for your business, you can shut the door on it at the end of the day, but you should still leave it as tidy as possible. You don’t want to waste time every morning trying to clear away the ever increasing mountain of paperwork you’ve been cultivating. Having an untidy desk sucks up a lot of wasted time, as you will forever be hunting for that invoice you saw last week.

The other big time waster – if you use a computer – is of course the internet. You may genuinely need to look up a website or some piece of information… but before you know it, three hours have gone by and you’re still surfing. If you do need to go online, keep a firm eye on the clock and a firm hand on what you’re doing. Try also to set aside a specific time each day to check your emails; build it into your schedule if they are work related. Personal emails should wait until after you are done for the day.

When you are working from home, you need to become good at setting priorities and ignoring personal jobs that need doing until after you’ve finished. The lawn wouldn’t get mowed if you were still working for someone else. So it should be left until you have finished work now, too.

Only the place of work changes when you work from home. The number of hours you do should stay the same.

And to that end, I wish you good luck.

by Allison Whitehead