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WORK FROM HOME TIPS
1. Go to work
When you work from home, your workspace may be just down the hall, but you still
need to intentionally go to work when you are ready to start your day. Some
people will walk around the block go to work in their home office and then walk
around the block to 'go home' at the end of the day. It may seem silly, but you
will be much more productive by making a concrete breaking point between when
you are at work and when you are off. You can still take advantage of a zero
commute by breaking your day up and perhaps doing a few equivalent hours of work
late in the evening or early in the morning-just be intentional about it. You
don't want to get into a situation where your work habits are the of 'channel
surfing.'
2. Create long, distraction-free periods
One of the advantages of working from home is being able to see your kids take
their first steps, be there for the cable repair man, and be able to help your
spouse bring in the heavy grocery items. On the other hand, with too many
distractions, you won't get any significant work periods where you can really
get into your productive zone. Here are some things that can help:
* Shift your work hours to be be earlier or later in the day. For example, if
your kids get home at 3pm, you might want to start working from home early so
you can be off when they get home. Alternatively, you may find you get more done
late at night when everyone else is asleep for the evening.
* Establish expectations with the rest of your household. For example: When your
office door is closed, that means no interruptions unless it is an emergency. If
a personal phone call comes in on your home phone, you are unavailable during
work hours.
* Make sure your office isn't in an area that needs to be frequently used for
other purposes. You don't want to be working in an area that is going to get a
lot of traffic. Better to have a less desirable room for your office than have a
constant stream of household members coming through all the time.
3. Get good equipment
There are definitely some ways you can save money with your home office. You can
use a door as a desk or deal with an ugly file cabinet, but don't put up with
equipment that will lessen the quality of your work. Make sure you have a
decent, reliable computer and a good backup plan for dealing with inevitable
technology malfunctions. I don't mean you need to spend money on the most
expensive computer out there, but you definitely don't want to spend hours each
day dealing with unreliable technology.
Here are some areas that I would not recommend cutting corners:
* Computer - Doesn't need to be fancy and doesn't need to be particularly fast.
Must be reliable.
* Computer Warranty - If your computer breaks, make sure you have a spare or a
quick way to get it fixed.
* Monitor - If your eyes are tired, you aren't going to get much work done.
* Chair - Doesn't need to be expensive, but it needs to be comfortable.
* Climate Control - If you don't get this right, you aren't going to be able to
concentrate.
* Lighting - Don't subject yourself to hour upon hour of flickering fluorescent
lighting when you work from home.
4. Dedicated office
Don't try to use your kitchen table as your office when you work from home. You
need a dedicated area-preferably with a door. If you don't have an extra
bedroom, you can finish a space in the attic, basement or garage. Some people
will put a storage shed in the back yard, run electricity to it and use that as
their office. Regardless of how you do it, you need a separate space for work in
order to keep your sanity.
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Media Guru Peter Shankman's Work-From-Home Tips
We've all dreamed of founding a million-dollar business from our spare bedrooms,
but Peter Shankman has actually done it. Less than two years ago, he founded
Help A Reporter Out, a way for reporters to post queries looking for sources; if
a reporter needs to find a mortgage expert, or a tree doctor, or a
fifty-year-old left-handed dad, HARO is increasingly the way they do it. Now the
network has 85, 000 members and brings in those desired seven figures of revenue
for Shankman.
As I bang my shins on boxes piled up from my recent move in an attempt to claw
my way to my desk, I thought now would be a perfect time to ask Shankman for his
successful-entrepreneur secrets to running a business from home. Here's what he
told me:
* Have more than one way to get online. That way your business won't go out just
because your cable does. 'I have a wireless card, I have a BlackBerry, somewhere
in the closet I have a modem, ' notes Shankman.
* Train people how to contact you. Having watched my brother-in-law wrestle with
the home phone/personal cell phone/business phone/business cell phone problem, I
asked Shankman how many cellphones he has. The answer is 'one phone, one
BlackBerry, ' but he prefers email, which both friends and clients have been
trained to use. 'If you get my voice mail, it says to email me or text me, and
I'll return the call that much quicker, ' Shankman says. 'And I do.'
* Try to be as paperless as possible. Any paper Shankman needs to keep 'goes
into a filing cabinet my assistant is in control of, ' he notes, or even better,
is scanned: 'The majority of stuff I sign and scan. I don't even own a fax
machine; there's no point.'
* As you grow, consider a dispered team. Shankman's first employee, his
assistant Meagan, works from his home office on the West Side of Manhattan. His
second and third employees work from their homes in White Plains, N.Y., and
Scottsdale, Ariz., respectively. Since you are not looking directly at these
people, they need to come through trusted networks, which leads to ...
* Hire well. When you trust your employees, privacy issues become irrelevant. 'I
hire people who are good at what I'm not, ' says Shankman, who notes that he
hired his assistant after he misbooked a flight to Singapore as a flight to
Shanghai. He rents an office for the day when he needs to conduct hiring
interviews, but he asks questions geared to making sure that the person is
comfortable with a non-traditional office. 'One of the hiring questions is,
'You're going to be working from my apartment. Are you okay with that?' he says.
And don't forget that a home office has some built-in business boosters. When
contacts do come in for a visit, Shankman says, 'usually they love the
cats.'http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/ask-agent/media-guru-peter-shankmans-work-from-home-tips/707/
Article Courtesy:
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