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Things You Should Consider When Working From Home

Lady working from homePicture it – it is a cold, dark and wet Monday morning and you are sitting in your car, in company with hundreds of others, in a rush hour-induced parking lot on the interstate. It’s 7 AM and you could do with another cup of coffee. Doesn’t this picture make you want to change your life and set up your own business, working from home? This is undoubtedly a question that hundreds of thousands of people think about on a regular basis. For some, it marks the start of a fantastic new career, but for others it just won’t work for a variety of reasons. So what should you consider before making the jump and firing your boss?

In reality there are a number of questions that you will need to address before you will be in a position to swap your driving boots for slippers. First and foremost, what talent and/or skills do you possess that would enable you to establish your own business? This is the fundamental question and you will be surprised what answers you can come up with if you really sit down and think about it thoroughly. You might remember that you had particular skills or passions in school or in college that could translate into a potential service. You might have a hobby which you could turn into a business enterprise, although many experts do advise against this!

Once you have settled on your work at home career you need to ask yourself whether you can financially cover the resources needed to take you through your transition, through the acquisition of clients and forward until you are at least able to meet all your monthly monetary requirements. Don’t underestimate the time that this may take, or take anything for granted. Can you think of some potential clients for your services? If you can, then you could really jump start this process.

Don’t be fooled by the time it will take to develop your new business enterprise. You will burn a lot of midnight oil and you will find that you are working far more than you were in your regular 9-to-5 job, at the very least to begin with. This will impact your home schedule and you really need to consider this. Working from home can have a lot of distractions and you will need to make sure that other family members fully understand that when you are at work, you are at work. Scheduling will be very important, as you must make sure that you have made the adequate preparations to look after your home chores, including getting the children off to school and looking after the pets, etc.

Try and come up with a very strict schedule and try and adhere to time management principles as efficiently as possible. You will need to allocate an area of your home as your office. Ideally, your home already has a suitable room and you should try to keep work in there and home activities elsewhere. Do not mix the two!

You will find that working from home can have major benefits, including a reduction in the stress of commuting. But when you are sitting in that jam of traffic on the interstate next Monday morning don’t be tempted to think that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as it takes a particular mindset and a very strict regime to make a go of working from home.

Do you work from home? What things did you consider before moving away from the office?

Adam Toren

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