Platinum Author
It took months to talk your boss into letting you work at home, but you're telecommuting at last. Now you discover that working at home presents unpredictable challenges you never expected. Will you still be able to make a success of it?
Or perhaps you started a small home business, like web publishing or website design. This should be easier than telecommuting, because there's no boss, right? Actually, having no boss is one of the major challenges of working at home. Your boss would expect you to do productive work all the time you're on the clock. Without that external control, other obligations and interest can lure you away from your desk or shop, and you'll be far less efficient than you could be.
Interruptions that mess up your carefully-planned daily schedule are so common they almost can't be called "unpredictable." This is especially true if there are small children in the house, but anyone can find themselves drawn away from their work tasks, for an amazing variety of reasons.
The most common interruption is the email inbox - always beeping, always inviting, always slightly more interesting than the tasks you really should be doing for your job or business. The most important scheduling priority should be, from the very beginning, to limit the time you spend reading emails. Set a specific time each day, and refuse to get dragged into the idea that "something really, really important" might come into your inbox during the other hours of the day. Face it - it's extremely rare for anyone to send an email that requires an immediate response. Just this one tip can give you several hours of extra productive time every day.
Household chores, even the ones you would normally try to avoid, can seem oddly enticingly when you're in the middle of a work task that seems boring or repetitive.
Back when you had a boss looking over your shoulder, you wouldn't consider wandering into the break room to clean up the mess that other coworkers left behind. You wouldn't drag the vacuum from the supply cupboard and power it up to clean under your desk, or wander around the office watering the plants in all the cubicles. But you may find yourself doing it while you're working at home. You may even start to head to the garage for the lawn mower, or decide to weed a few rows in the garden.
Everyone needs a break now and then, but breaks should be scheduled into your workday - not taken whenever you get the whim to straighten up or do a bit of dusting. And that includes cooking for dinner - your work should come first. Wait until the job is done before starting any project around the house, no matter how important it might be. Otherwise, you may soon find out that you can't get the work done if you stay home to do it.
Does the spouse expect you to pick up his suits from the cleaner, now that you aren't driving in to work every day? Does your child's teacher expect you to spend more time helping in the classroom, or does she schedule teacher-parent meetings during working hours, now that you're at home? Do you find yourself running to the store to pick up a few extra things that you forgot to buy during your weekly shopping trip? In that case, it's time to set some boundaries, both to let others know that working at home is important to you, and to let yourself know that you can commit yourself to acting like a professional - even when no one's watching.
No matter how well you schedule and plan, there will still be unpredictable challenges that crop up while you work at home, but you can avoid the most common interruptions simply by making a plan and sticking to it, no matter what.
About this Author
Jonni has been writing online for over 8 years. She often writes about pets, gardening, and health, but she has other interests as well. On her latest website she describes many picture framing tools. This is the site to see if you're putting together a workshop for a new DIY picture framing hobby or career.
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