Habit Forming
For those of you who have made the jump from office to home office, how are you doing on the whole “I’m working from home, so I gotta get serious” thing? A recent discussion over at Anne Wayman’s About Freelance Writing site talked about whether a writer should have an outside address or if working from home is really possible. Seems like a strange question? Not if you’ve been there, it doesn’t.
See, I’ve been working from home for a few years now, and this writer’s question echoed one of the biggest problems I’ve had with working from home – actually being able to work at home. For some, it’s tough to switch that mindset to include a space at home that is strictly for work. For others, the thought of sitting around in boxers while talking via phone to company presidents feels too weird. For still others, home has way too many distractions.
So some tips – if you’re making the switch to working from home, set yourself up for success from day one. Start with a clear starting time. Set the clock, put on decent clothes, brush your teeth and make the commute to your office space. Oh, and that’s a biggie – have an area of the house where you can set up shop. It doesn’t have to be an extra room, just somewhere that you can designate as your space. When I lived in a small condo, that area was one corner of the living room facing away from the television (yea, you should consider Oprah off limits – no fair calling it research!).
Make sure you budget your time for work. Start with a list of what you want to accomplish. Factor in marketing (and you must market – if you don’t sell yourself, you’re not going to work), billing, answering email and phone calls, and time for actual work. Assume you can write for about six hours and make sure you stay at that keyboard for those six hours. Set up a work schedule you can live with – if you write better in the morning, set your schedule so that you have time to start or finish those projects at that time. Once you decide what you’ll be doing all day and when, your ability to work from home will be that much easier.
Still, you have to sit in that chair every day, something you’re not used to. Don’t you spend much more “quality” time on the sofa? But your success depends on it, so in that schedule, work in something in the morning that will draw you to that chair. Perhaps it’s scanning the morning news, or maybe it’s reading weblogs to get the creative juices flowing. Whatever it is, make sure it’s a draw and not a distraction. For example, if your morning blows by and you’ve purchased three items on EBay, two on Amazon and ordered catalogs galore, you’re clearly not meant to open Internet Explorer until you’ve spent a few hours in Word.
Suppose you dress for success, you show up to “work” and you have your schedule, but nothing happens? Time for desperate measures. Chances are you’re still equating commuting with actual work. If so, pack up the laptop and head out the door. A nice quiet library or a bustling café with Internet access may be just the ticket to stirring the creative jui