Working from home

Yesterday I talked about the importance of having a diary and setting your core business hours to ensure your home business has the time and attention it deserves.

But what if something comes up and you need to do something personal in your business hours? That’s easy. This is benefit of working for yourself. Being flexible is one of the biggest perks.

Mark yourself as “busy” in your diary

Any person in business will tell you that when you run a diary it’s as easy as marking yourself out as “busy” in your diary when you have either business or personal things to attend to. Nobody will know that you are not just busy on the business. Think about it. If you were a real estate agent. Most people would expect you to be available when they want to go an inspect a house but you can’t be available if you are already with a client can you. So why is it any different if you are unavailable for any other reason? It shouldn’t be.

Altering your work/life balance

In saying all this. If you do too much personal stuff in your core work hours your business will suffer and you will feel you are not achieving much. So, it is important not to schedule lots of personal things during your core work hours. Make it a rule you don’t do it often. You may have to do some extra hours on another day to make up for these hours but you don’t need to let any else know about it. It will be more efficient if you don’t. If the time you allocate to do the “make-up” hours is when others normally expect you to catch up with them, you just use the same tact with them. You are doing something else and make a different time to see them. If you have too many “make up “hours to do you will find your work/life balance suffers. You will be stressed with the kids for interrupting you and you are likely to mistakes.

In summary:

If you were working for a boss, you would have set hours but you would negotiate with your boss for time off and either take paid/unpaid time or make up the hours. Treat your core business hours the same in a home business.

• One of the perks of working from home is that you can be flexible and fit in personal things
• The problem with doing personal things during business hours is you alter the work/life balance you have created when you set up your ideal work hours

In my next blog: the importance of a clearly defined workspace.

Kerri Bainbridge

Anywhere Team New Zealand