It will be sixteen years ago in June that I started working from home. The positives are that it has enabled me to be both a home maker and also have a career. There are many times when the two have been in conflict and time management techniques have been thrown out with the babies bath water -
- What do you do first change an urgent nappy or answer an email?
- How far do you have to walk with your children in a pram so that they fall asleep for long enough that you can sound calm, relaxed and employable by a potential client when you pitch for work on the 'phone (cell phones have changed all that!)?
- Can you stand up and deliver a day's training when you have been up all night with a child with toothache? The child is miraculously better in the morning - but you dare not look in the mirror and make-up isn't going to make any difference.
This week is half-term so I will be working amidst being a taxi-driver for my teenagers as I take them from one social engagement to another. Laptops, cell phones and email have made a great difference compared to when I started in 1992 and at least teenagers don't get up at five a.m ready for their day (well not many) so I have some quiet, productive time then.
I think the hardest thing about working from home is that your work is always sitting there beckoning. If your work was in an office ten miles away there is a divide between you and it, although more and more people are "expected" to check their emails at evenings and weekends. When your work is in the corner of the room or on a laptop in the kitchen it is very easy to let it spill into your family life. This weekend I have made myself put my laptop away. It is back out at 7.00 am on a Monday but I physically put it away so it wasn't a physical barrier between me and everyone else.
We don't say we work from our "house" we say that we work from our "home". It is important to recognise that it is not the building but the people and how they interact with each other that makes a home. Christian Morgenstern said, "Home is not where you live, but where they understand you." I really identify with that quote and if you get the balance right it is a really good environment to work from too!
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