I’m self-employed and have been working from home for about six months. There’s some things I love about this
> I can pick my hours
> I have very little stress (apart from making money)
> No commuting
> No boss to please
> No office politics.
But sometimes it’s just…damn lonely. My partner is out from 8am til 7.30pm and the rest of the day I’m just on my own. I hardly even have to speak to clients as everyone just emails me. I’m also sometimes finding it hard to concentrate without the strictures of an office. Look! I’m even surfing the net now!
So, if you work from home, how do you cope? Do you break up your day at all by going to the gym, taking a laptop to a coffee bar, meeting friends for lunch? How do you summon the motivation to be at your desk at 9am and stay there til 6?
Well, as you said, you can pick your hours, so you don’t have to emulate the rat race by doing 9-to-5.
That said, I also have a procrastination problem, and 15 years of full-time freelancing hasn’t alleviated it much. Breaks are important, but it’s easy to get carried away.
Sometimes if I’m really under the gun, it helps to pack up the laptop and go someplace where there’s nothing to do but work.
Sometimes it helps me concentrate if I actually allow myself a slight distraction: instrumental music (I usually work in absolute quiet), a scented candle, a cup of tea, a low-calorie snack to munch while I work (such as baby carrots and salsa). Or take my laptop to the couch for some comfy work, instead of the feeling of being chained to the desk.
I might set tiny goals: after I finish this chapter, or two hours’ worth of work, I can take a break BUT NOT BEFORE!
Between tasks is a good time for a break; it has the added benefit of clearing the head. I’m fond of getting up and working in my jammies to finish something up, then having a nice soak in the tub (or, more recently, a quick walk/jog and then the soak and a little something to eat) before I switch to the next project.
You’re aware of online chatter for human contact, but of course it’s not the same as “being among the three-dimensional people,” as I like to put it. A quick grocery run or a phone call can help with that. Sometimes I’ll pick up the phone and call a client when e-mail would have done just as well; it helps to touch base that way and sometimes we get to chatting and I might get a lead on a new project, or a better feel for how the current one is going.
And of course, there’s no rule that says your days off have to be on the weekends. I love taking a Tuesday, for example, to go bombing around running errands and whatnot, deadlines permitting. And sometimes it’s actually more relaxing to leave work for the weekends, knowing that clients who work regular business hours won’t be breathing down your neck or e-mailing to ask for this or that.
I belong to a couple of groups that have regular meetings, one weekly and one monthly, so that gets me out of the house. After the weekly meeting (Weight Watchers) I usually go for a quick bite with my two friends who are also in WW, so that’s some built-in socializing.
We also have two rambunctious dogs who make good company. They’re always ready for either a romp or a quick snooze, they’re always happy to be around me, and they don’t talk my ear off.
Thanks Scarlett, it sounds like you’ve got it sorted! I’ve considered looking into renting desk space in a like-minded company so I can have an office routine and see other people during the day - although that throws the ‘no-commuting’ benefit out of the window!
I’ve also just found a freelancers lunch club, for people like me going crazy at home, which might be fun. Wouldn’t hurt to make some new friends either.
Yeah, some people do that too. But I can’t justify the expense, and I wouldn’t want to – I have a nice comfy office right here at home, with fixtures custom-built for me by my handy hubby. Plus I live in BFE, so I’m pretty sure there’s nothing like that around here.
That would be cool! I attend conferences and workshops for freelancers now and then, but they’re halfway across the country, and I do it more for the chance to talk shop face-to-face with colleagues than for any benefit from the content (which is admittedly a nice bonus). But that’s always an expensive proposition, with airfare/train fare, hotel, meals, etc. A local lunch group would be great, but not gonna happen around here. Lucky you!
The knowledge that I would have to work in an office if I can’t muster the discipline to work from home is enough to keep me motivated. But really, I never found working from home particularly hard - I have a much nicer office here than any outside-the-house office I’ve ever had, I don’t have to wear goofy clothes, and my dog can sit on my lap. What’s not to like?
My husband also works from home, so he’s around to talk to if I need socializing.
The only times I really find it difficult is when I don’t have enough work to do. If I have, say, 3 hours of work to do and a week to do it in, it’s really easy to just screw around on the web or read or take a bike ride instead of work. That rarely happens, though. Most of the time I have 40 hours of work to do and 2 days to do it.
I work from home, but I don’t lead a lonely life (other than due to my continuing inability to find a boyfriend). I do a lot of volunteer work that keeps me in touch with the community, and I socialize a lot.
I’ve been working from home for about 2 1/2 years now, and it does take adjusting. For all the great benefits (lack of commute, flexible hours) from which I have to wonder if I could ever go back, the “cabin fever” and lack of human contact does take getting used to.
I have adopted a schedule that goes something like this (usually):
work a bunch in the morning
after lunch, take some sort of break: run errands, go to the gym, or just nap or work on personal stuff (laundry, pay bills, etc.)
work late afternoon
work a bit in the evening after dinner
I find breaking up the day helps a lot. And in the work I do (software engineer), I find that stepping back for a couple hours is actually very productive. I’ll think of things and come up with solutions while doing other things - I don’t need to be staring at the monitor to resolve issues.
Meeting friends for lunch is always a good thing.
When I first started out, I had another friend who also worked from home. And we would arrange “work dates” (like “play dates” for people who work at home). I would bring my stuff over to her house, and we’d each work on our respective projects, but in each other’s company. Sounds like of lame and pathetic as I write about it, but it was kind of like sharing a cubicle with someone working on another project. You each work on your own projects, but you can still chat and bounce ideas off each other (and gripe about all the flaws of your project’s management).
I’m like Kalhoun - I’m here from 9-5. I don’t get to set my own hours. Some days I sleep in a bit or stay late - or stay super super late and work for hours on end…but I am always here 9-5.
I talk with my co-workers over IM during the day, or my friend who works in an office, or Athena
Yeah, it kind of sucks to be “alone” but it also sucks to get up and put on clothes every day. I’d rather not go out to lunch or take a break, as it messes up my feeling of “I am at work now.”
Honestly, I treat the Dope like my water cooler. Perhaps I could benefit from some face-to-face but so far I’m doing ok after 6+ years of working at home, alone.
After work, I shower up and go out. Lonliness solved!
I work from home between 3-5 days a month on average, but we have three kids, and my son is 3 years old - “not now, Daddy’s working” is not in his vocabulary.
The problem is our office is open to the rest of our house - once we frame the entryway and hang a door (preferably a bank vault door), I think I’ll be working from home more often.
I’m Susie Slob most days around the house while I’m working. That’s why I like to spiff up when I go out and about. Plenty of nice clothes in my closet next to the grubs.
When I work from home I tend to work harder than when I’m in the office. Part of that is because working from home is a privilege, and I’m very conscientious about not abusing it. The larger part is that I don’t have the distractions of a chatty coworker or going out to lunch. I’m basically glued to the couch all day – though I’ll grab a bite and check the mail. I should use my ‘lunch break’ to walk ‘around the block’ (a 1.9-mile route I like); but I tend to want to get just… a little… more… done.
I don’t get lonely for company. I can pop over to the Dope periodically.
I worked from home once upon a time but it was a telecommuting job so my hours were pretty much set----I worked when the business was open whether I wanted to or not.
I found it very helpful to dress as if I were in an actual office. I didn’t wear a tie and I did wear house shoes but I wore nice pants and nice shirts. If I didn’t shave every day and if I wore grubby clothes, I just couldn’t get in the mood for working.
I’ve worked out of my home for over 25 years. I love it love it love it. I had a brief stint (9 months) in an office and I fully realized that human contact wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
When working out of your house, you get to choose which 3D people who you associate with. No politics. No water cooler. No drama. It’s a little bit of heaven.
I’m with you on this one. I get up and shower as soon as my partner leaves for work (7.45), and I get properly dressed - not exactly smart ‘officewear’ (I’m a designer, so I’ve never had to do the suit thing anyway), but I at least make sure I’m clean and tidy. It puts me in a work frame of mind.
I like the idea of finding a work ‘date’ - perhaps I will be able to find someone at this freelancers lunch club thing. I wouldn’t want to do it every day, but once a week might be good.
I’ve been doing it for 10 years. My business pretty much runs itself now, and has shown to be recession proof. Finally have some decent money coming in, or at least considerably better than when I used to have working factories. I love it, but the phone calls can be a pain, and keep you pinned down. Or used to, anyway. Having my phone calls forwarded to my cell phone, lets me do anything and go anywhere I want to do at pretty much any time. If you don’t have that luxury, a good book helps. If you don’t care for reading that much, there is always something on the internet to explore. I also get to spend time in my shop building whatever I want to build. Next project is an experimental plane.
The biggest downer for me, is not that I don’t have the free time, but my friends and family don’t have the same luxury. That is what really sucks! You pretty much have to do many things by yourself, when everybody else is working all the time. So although I stay busy, it still gets a bit lonely on occasion, especially since I’m between girl friends right now. It wasn’t so bad when I had a steady girl friend, so hoping to correct that problem soon. Meanwhile, I tend to spend a bit more time with my elderly parents, since at least they seem to have as much free time as I do, and they are somewhat a hoot to be around, anyway.
Hehe, timing-of-showers is one big thing that changes (at least for me) when I work from home.
Working in an office, you get up, take a shower, go to work.
Working from home, there’s no need to take a shower before you show up at your desk. So pretty much I take a shower in the late afternoons or early evenings - before I go out of the house, or even before I go to bed. It’s amazing how you can get busy and notice at 9pm that you haven’t showered yet.
And yeah, like everyone else says, my socialization comes from the Dope and IM. Much better than real-world office socialization, where you’re constantly being interrupted by cow-orkers you don’t like coming into your office trying to show you pictures of their vacation/kids/pets/etc.
I worked from home for about 9 months, and it sounds like I’m the only one who chose to go back to the office. For my job, it just didn’t work: the connection was too slow, and it took me 10 hours to do what I could get done here in 7. I did not have my choice of hours: if I could have done my work on the overnight, when kids were asleep and the system wasn’t as overloaded, it might have worked. But everyone was online at work, and after I went up to meet the kids at the bus stop, my day was shot.
I did, however, love the commute. And I have a nice home office: back then, I had a great view as well. (We’ve moved since then.) I also liked knowing that my food would stay in the refrigerator and that I didn’t have to clean up after fellow employees in the bathroom.
I work from home two days a week and go to the office three days a week. My working conditions at home are much more pleasant and conducive to productivity than in the office, and I have a tendency to work harder and longer at home.
I’m not sure how it would be working at home five days a week, whether I would get stir-crazy or miss the social aspects of the office, but I would love to find out.
