Thought I'd make that clear after having my brain turned to mush by the budget commentary on the radio this afternoon.
Having the radio on is one of the benefits of working from my own office at home, usually radio 5 or sometimes 4 or classic FM (can't stand some of the self righteous people who call in on radio 5's phone in's).
I don’t start before 8.30 as I drive my eldest to school, I then sometimes take the youngest to school as well – a walk down the road. Add to that sometimes picking one or all up from school, stopping around 4.45-5 for dinner with the family and I’ve lost quite a lot of the working day.
I make up for it by usually working in the evening. I find that between 7 and say 11 in the evening (and sometimes at the weekend) I can easily get twice as much done as during the working day – no phone call or e-mail interruptions, radio on and focus on the work.
This works well for me, work gets done and I get to spend some quality time with the family, something I would really struggle to do if I worked a strict 8.30-6ish.
I’d be interested to hear what other home workers do and how they split work/home life.
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Replies (7)
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Mix and match
I aim to start around 9am or earlier if poss but it depends on being distracted by AWeb, walking the dog, breakfast etc. And I'd rather not work in the evening or weekend now as then I feel like I'm getting no life. But equally I'm off to the dentist tomorrow morning and I've spent the majority of this week studying so it evens out. I prefer some background noise (except for where I'm thinking and writing) so I used to have a portable dvd player on my desk but recently I've found listening to audiobooks to be great for concentration. I seem to get distracted less.
Similar to Kent Accountant
Similar hours to Kent Accountant, except I don't take kids to school - I walk the dogs instead. I find radio distracting so just have the window open so I can hear the birds coughing (I blame traffic pollution). I too find evenings very productive, and lets face it TV is a total waste of time.
For me ...
... unless there are pressing deadlines, evenings and weekends are for family and social life (or, with nothing better to do, AW :¬) )
9-5ish
It depends how busy I am. I tend to work 9-5ish, but like today, the budget messed that up. Still I'm now off to see if i's actually worth switching the TV on. I could always go for a pint since George has made it affordable :)
I work evenings...
... with the telly/i-player (dual screens are good :o) ) on - I do the no brain stuff and get it out the way so I can concentrate on the thinking stuff in the daytime.
I used to do the same as KA when working from home. Worked really well.
Now I always do the morning school run then to work for 9:30 - 10.
2 days a week I finish by 2:30 to do the afternoon school run.
1 day a week I work until around 4 - 5
Then on the other 2 I work until around 7 as a catch up.
Works pretty well for me.
Flexibility is key
With smart phones, laptops, virtual phone lines, office phones diverted to mobiles there's no reason why you can't make your work fit your lifestyle. There's no reason why you can't stay in touch with your clients whereever you are.
This is a part of working for myself that I think is great. Right now I'm just back to work for an hour or so (after stopping at 5pm) preparing for two client and two prospect meetings tomorrow, preparing a few month end payrolls and a few follow up emails (sitting in the outbox ready to send first thing tomorrow while I'm sitting on a train).