Is Working From Home For You.

We all would love to be able to work from home, set our own hours, work when we want, sleep in if we want, no boss to answer to (Except your partner of course lol), you would have time to play with your children, able to take them to school, wow how good would this be, sounds like a dream come to, don’t jump to fast all is not a bed of roses.

Your current situation…

Let’s tackle our current situation as it is now and this is assuming you are currently employed in what we will call a normal job, meaning you start at a set time have morning tea, lunch, afternoon break, and finish at the same time each day.

Now, this may seem to sound like you are controlled in what you are able to do, but I ask you this question is this such a bad thing, we fully understand what we need to do within this set amount of time each day, we have certain tasks that must be completed each day. We are held accountable to our employer if we do not meet these expected deadlines.

We understand that from 9 to 12 we are going to work, sure we can have a break get a coffee, but we fully understand that we are there to perform a given task. We understand that we are going to have a break from 12 to 1 for lunch then for most of us we are then returning to our job and work through from 1 to 5, then our day is done.

This is what we would call our normal working life, and for most of us, this happens Monday through to Friday and sometimes on the weekends. But I ask you again is this such a bad thing. This is what we have been brought up to believe and understand is the normal things adults do, get a good education, find a good job, buy a house and start a family. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with this, but I like others are not happy to be normal or are we.

What would happen…

What would happen if we were left to our own devices and are able to run our own online business from the comfort of our lounge rooms, sitting on the couch in front of the television with a nice cup of hot coffee in hand, OMG the pure bliss, how good is this, the dream has come true.

But has it really, has the dream really come true, stop and think about this for a minute, it takes a special type of person to be able to work from home, although this might sound appealing it is not for everyone, and some have even stopped doing just that and returned to a normal 9 to 5 schedule.

Things to consider…

There are things that you need to consider if you are going to make the change, and it is not just what time are you going to get out of bed.

Are you disciplined enough to work from home, you might think this is a stupid question, but there are plenty of successful business people who have decided to do this very thing, but left to their own devises lack the discipline required to do the work, they are not held accountable anymore and instead of turning up for work at 8 are either still in bed or taking the kids to school.

To work from home either it is for your own business or your employer allows you to conduct your work from home, can be a major problem for some of us, and this needs to be addressed before we make this, what can be a critical decision, as there may be no turning back.

Just an example…

Let’s assume you are married with two children, you have one child at school the other is only 2 years old, and your wife is a stay at home mum, so you are the sole income earner, big responsibility on your shoulders to provide for your family. Nothing that sounds out of the ordinary, millions of people do this every day.

Your morning would normally start with you up at 6 am getting ready for work and out the door by 7 am and at work by 8 am. But now you work from home, no one to answer to except yourself.

Now you are up at 7 am and not getting ready for work but now helping with breakfast, getting the children dressed, and are now tasked with the job of also taking your child to school, who would normally take the bus but you are home now remember. At 8 am you are off on your way to school, drop your child off hoping they are going to learn plenty, and are back home by 9 am, do we go straight to work, I would say no way, lets have a coffee with our partners and a bit of a rest, its been a busy morning, you earned it.

So far we are an hour behind from what we would normally have done its 9 am and we have not even turned on the computer or picked up the phone. Its fair to say that by the time we finished our coffee and think we had better do some work it could be close to 9.30 – 10 am, we are now two hours behind from what we have normally done.

Time is slipping away…

Finally, we start to work, we have turned the spare room into our office, it is not perfect but it is your space to work, and our day begins. Now this needs to be understood, for years you have been going to your normal job, you are now at home and naturally your partner is happy about this, as we all would be, and as your loving partner they ask if you would like coffee and cake at 11 am, mmmmmm bugger it YES PLEASE, we stop working for another 30 minutes. 2.5 hours lost out of our day.

Back to work, lunch is at 12.30 till 1 pm, back to work, In the meantime, we have helped our partner with our second child a couple of times, so although we have worked, it would be fair to say we had interruptions thus far.

Now its 3 pm our child who would normally be catching the bus home is now waiting for us to pick them up from school, another hour lost, we look at what we have achieved today at all of a sudden it hits us we really have not completed that much work, we realize we are going to be up till 10 pm to finish what is required for the day.

What happened to the day…

Our job of starting at 8 am and finishing at 5 pm, normally an 8-hour day has now blown out from 9 am to 10 pm, an 11-hour day, wow this working from home is so good.

Now I know this is only an example for the purpose of this post but what I was trying to get across is that to work from home sometimes can be not everything we expected it to be. It takes a very special kind of person to be able to have the discipline that is required to run a business from home, I say this with no disrespect to anyone but in some cases it is true.

So what can we do…

There needs to be a system put in place before the decision is made, much like a board meeting, all members of the family (if old enough of course), need to sit down and discuss how things are going to change, but it needs to be made crystal clear that from 8 am to 5 pm you are at work. Things must carry on as normal or as normal as possible now that you are working from home. Sure there can be changes, you can still take kids to school etc, but you must then set this time aside to do the work that is required each day.

Remembering also you are the sole income earner, nothing in that respect has changed, it is even more important now that you are 100% focused on the day ahead, you are not accountable to anybody now except yourself, no one to watch over you, no set start or finish time, you are your own boss.

Before you knew what had to be done in those set working hours, do not be fooled into thinking you are going to do the same job in less time now that you are working from home. The benefits can be so rewarding, but it also can be a very dangerous change if you are not 100% disciplined.

So the question still remains….. Are you ready for an online business and if so are you ready to work from home.

Only you know the answer, good luck with your decision.

I would love to know your thoughts on this post, if you have any comments or questions please feel free to leave them below.

Kind Regards,

Craig.