1 Untitled

My office is also a separate room for the last 5 years. I love work at home because it is absolute freedom! :-) I have only one problem with tracking work time…

posted at 10:40 am on July 15, 2008 by Fonts K

2 Particularly Relevant

This article is particularly relevant, especially in light of Kathy Sierra’s recent tweet — learning to balance all of the home responsibilities is difficult but so very important.

Another important part of learning to work at home is learning how to deal with the phone, especially if your personal cell phone is your work phone. I just recently went on vacation and got quite a few requests for work at the strangest places (in fact, one woke me up this morning). I’ve found that professional and candid responses work best: “Thanks so much for calling, I’d really love to talk with you but I’m actually on vacation right now, can you call back Tuesday of next week?”

I’ll probably look into Grand Central again to help divert things better; I was under the assumption that commercial usage of Grand Central was prohibited.

posted at 01:16 pm on July 15, 2008 by Jesse Gardner

4 Great advice, struggling to implement it

Although I’m not a freelancer, my employer has allowed me to participate in a pilot of their telecommuting program for the past year or so. I work in the office three days a week and work from home the other two days. It’s been wonderful, but distractions are definitely something that’s proven difficult to manage.

My particular family situation (a 3 month old infant, a wife who works the night shift, and a house that’s too small to accommodate an office space separate from the living room) makes mitigating those distractions pretty difficult, but we’re working through it. It certainly helps when your employer — or client — is flexible with your work hours!

posted at 02:15 pm on July 15, 2008 by David M.

5 Excellent Article!

Thank you for this excellent article!

I’ve been working from home since 2002 and have learned some of these things the hard way. I have the opposite perspective of being a dad with a 2 year old and a wife who works part time in our business, but she works from the couch most of the time because she can.

When we moved into our new home in 2006 I designated one of the bedrooms as an office (yes with a door lock). One thing that has helped me tremendously was designing and painting the office to look completely different that the rest of the house. When I leave or go to “work” the transition is easier because I walk into or out of a different environment. And the (business) phone doesn’t ring in the house, unless I am expecting a scheduled call.

As a man my tendency is to want to look back to the office when I should be spending time with the family. Having a unique space and scheduling my time helps me better do that.

Thanks again for this great article.

posted at 02:39 pm on July 15, 2008 by Paul Erickson

7 AS they get older, they get louder!

I’ve been a working from home full time as a freelance developer since late 2001. My children are now 14, 10 and 7. When the kids were younger I thought they could get loud at times, but in the last year or so, during the summer it can get kind of crazy. We’ve been fortunate that my wife does not have to hold a job out of the home so that’s been a huge help. We’ve tried to develop in the children an awareness of what’s going on around them so that they can “try” and not be too loud, but they are still kids and there’s no way around it really. When we moved fro CA to Idaho we were able to find a house that had a good set up for a home office, without that I’d be on the fence (near to jump off!) about getting an outside office. Don’t want to sound too negative, but it doesn’t get easier as they get older, I’d guess until they’re around… 20? ;-)

posted at 04:21 pm on July 15, 2008 by Don Stefani

8 A Room of One's Own

Having your own space has psychological advantages for everyone. In our house, we decided the best way to give me the psychological and physical space I needed was to give the kids the same thing.

One of the things we did when I decided to work from home was convert the entire upstairs to our children’s domain. They are 10 and 6. We gave them the upstairs office and the loft in addition to their bedrooms. They have their computers upstairs, an art room, a video game center, and a bathroom. They only need to come downstairs to eat or to play outside. Otherwise, between the time they come home from school and the time I’m done working, they live upstairs.

The logic here was that if they had their own space—not just a bedroom—that they’d feel less need to invade the privacy that I need to get my work done. So far, so good. The house feels like it really houses everyone’s needs—my husband and I share a bedroom and an office, and the kids have upstairs to themselves. That’s really helped my productivity.

posted at 07:52 pm on July 15, 2008 by amber simmons

9 Interesting perspective

The issue of “how not to go insane when working from home” is one that’s been occupying my mind, after going freelance and homeworking for the last year or so. It’s interesting to see the perspective of someone with more of an established home environment.

Not having a family or, for that matter, house, puts a bit of a different slant on things but I find it quite illuminating that actually a lot of the issues seem to result in similar conclusions. For instance, the section titled “when all else fails, get away” is precisely what I do when I realise that I have been refreshing Twitter for the past hour instead of actually doing anything useful.

It does make me wonder whether some of the advice as to avoiding distractions is to an extent to avoid giving in to distractions as well, putting oneself in a position where one just can’t procrastinate.

posted at 09:05 pm on July 15, 2008 by fridge magnet