The successive typhoons that recently came over the Philippines gave my roof and ceiling a complete beating. I thought I could ignore the rainwater dripping into every room in the house but, when I woke up one morning and found my head completely wet thanks to a new hole, I knew I couldn’t postpone the repairs any longer.
But working from home and having your home repaired can be a chaotic mix. It tends to destroy your routine, concentration and even the quality of your work. So what can we home office workers do to prevent that from happening? Read the rest of this entry »
This week, my husband was laid off for the second time in five years. This one hurts more than the first. At that time, I held a corporate job, so our health insurance and other benefits remained intact. But I became a full-time freelancer after he found a stable job with benefits. Now that’s all gone or won’t be around for long.
After I stopped reeling, it was time to start dealing. And deal I did — by taking these actions. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, I sat down with pen and paper and tried to make a decision about the projects I was going to be working on over the coming months. I wrote down those projects that were currently under way, as well as those I was most interested in pursuing.
The only problem was, by taking on the new projects, I was effectively doubling my workload, and I was barely keeping up with what was already on my plate. Something had to give.
For several hours, I tried to force a square peg into a round hole. I tried changing my perspective, thinking of it in different ways, rearranging my schedule over and over — all to no avail. It just wasn’t going to fit. I finally had to accept a few simple truths. Read the rest of this entry »
With all the noise from the Internet, our computers and our environment, some folks struggle to work and focus even for 10 minutes straight. In this post, I’m going to offer some ways you can stop the distractions so you can get your tasks done. Read the rest of this entry »
It doesn’t matter how focused you are, working from your remote office likely entails more than a few distractions. For each of us those distractions will be different (I just had to break my morning’s work to move my goat to a new patch of grass; you may not have to cram this particular commitment into your schedule). And, truth be told, they’re not always unwelcome. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by Patrick Fitzgerald
As I sit here working on blog posts, I can hear my next door neighbor, aka @crazyneighbor, carry on loudly through the wall of my home office. He seems to be alternating between mowing the lawn, making very loud whooping noises, and fixing his car. Needless to say, it can be pretty distracting.
When I worked in an off-site office, I had plenty of distractions, too. Usually in the form of one of these interesting characters: Mr. “I talk loudly on my phone in the cubicle next door,” Ms. “I love my speakerphone all of the time,” Mr. “Drop in and chat even when people are busy” or Ms. “I make very smelly food in the microwave.”
Becoming a web worker has a completely different set of distractions. Kids are an additional distraction for many of my friends, and while I’ve avoided that particular one, I have plenty of my own. Loud neighbors, a significant other who is also a web worker, household chores, Twitter and many other things pull me out of the zone and into a distracted state.
I have, however, a few ways of dealing with distractions and the reduced productivity that come with them. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the downsides of web working is that you’re prone to distractions at home, whether it’s the snacks calling to you from the fridge or a toddler throwing tantrums. I experience these distractions everyday and have found ways around most of them. My most important “weapon against mass distractions”, so to speak, was to wake up at 2:00am and work while the rest of the neighborhood sleeps.
Except for my new neighbors, of course. They moved in last week and, since then, it’s been one loud evening after another.
Read the rest of this entry »
When clients call you and hear a baby cooing or a kitten meowing in the background, they can’t help but remember that you’re human. You’re not just an invisible web working slave that does their bidding. You have a life, a family, and pets. Your clients know this because they can hear voices and home background noise when they call you.
But it’s not always advantageous that your clients hear background noise during calls or voice chat sessions. Especially if you have a rooster.
Schedule your client calls.
I mentioned my pet rooster again because he produces the loudest noise here at home. I used to have an absolute look of terror when I’m on Skype with a client and he would start crowing. I wrote in a previous post here at WWD that I worked around this problem by scheduling my work tasks around the time when my pets are asleep. This allows me to call up clients without worrying about any noises the neighbors or pets might make.
Scheduling is also beneficial if your clients are the ones initiating calls. This tends to make both parties more productive. Clients can batch requests or comments rather than calling you every time they think of something new. You can also spend more time on the work itself, rather than answering the phone all day.
Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
