Writing for life

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo…

I’ve been working from home for seven years now. Let me say that again… because it’s hard for me to believe it’s been that long: I’ve been working at home for seven years now!

Wow! (no pun intended)

There are countless benefits to working from home, but also significant challenges. On balance though, from a parent’s perspective I’d have to say I heartily recommend it! Here are just a few of the pros and cons I’ve encountered over the last seven years.

The Good

• The 20 second commute: this has to be the number one thing about working from home. Listening to the morning traffic report while sipping coffee and contemplating the short stroll across the garden to my home office is one of the highlights of my working day.

• Suit… what’s a suit?: when you work from home the only dress code is the one you choose for yourself.

• Time out: one of the best things about working from home, particularly when you have a young family, is the ability to arrange your work to suit you. Want a couple of hours off in the afternoon to take the kids to the beach, no problem! My work is fluid, it flows seamlessly around the more important aspects of my life… that flexibility is priceless.

• Making a meal of it: the dining table is the hub of family life… and working from home means I never miss a meal with the family. I think that’s priceless!

The Bad

• Exponential Distraction: if you think distractions at the office are bad, you should try working at home. Children running into the office, impromptu visitors, emptying the dishwasher, weeding the vegetable patch… even mowing the lawn. I kid you not, when you’re working on something you don’t really enjoy even gardening has its appeal.

• Discipline and deadlines: I’m a terrible procrastinator. It’s just the way I’m built. I need a pressure to kick start my brain into motion; that can be a good thing, but it also means I let work build up to a critical mass before attacking it. That tends to put me (and hence the rest of the family) under unnecessary pressure. You have to be disciplined – and that’s one of my biggest challenges.

• Isolation: working from home means you spend long periods working alone. Yes I’m in contact with lots of people via e-mail, the telephone and online every day… but it’s not the same as meeting face-to-face. That’s the main reason I’m involved with a local small office/home office networking group SOHO Solo (www.sohosoloireland.com and www.sohosolowestcork.com). Meeting other home-based workers regularly helps to keep me sane….

• Always on call: one of the biggest pluses of working from home is the fact that you’re always around your family… but it’s also one of the biggest challenges. It’s only natural to prioritise family over work – but when you work at home sometimes you can be too available.

The Ugly

• Doing the jobs you hate: when you’re working for yourself you have to look after everything – including the jobs you don’t like. Jobs like sorting out the accounts, filing and business administration stuff. Yuck!

• Biting off more than you can chew: sometimes it’s easy to forget you’re just one person, and you take on more work than you can handle. I’m getting better at managing my workload now… saying no to things. Still, at home unexpected things always crop up to throw your schedule out of kilter. You have to give yourself enough of a buffer to be accommodate that.

But the best thing about working from home has to be that I get to spend so much time with my children. Sometimes that can seem more of a curse than a blessing… but on balance there are more ups than downs, and as the girls grow up I know the time I’m investing now will pay real dividends.

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