As technology allows us to be more mobile, it also allows us to work in areas that contain distractions, including, when we are at home, our children. Web Worker Daily has several good tips for working with kids in the house. Some of the tips work good whether you are working from home or not. For example,
1. Wake up early. I’ve trained myself to get up at 4:30 a.m. most days (sometimes I sleep in until 5:30 or 6:00 a.m.). Now, I’m not saying you have to get up that early, but getting up even half an hour or an hour earlier than the younguns can give you some time to do some uninterrupted work in the quiet of the predawn hours.
3. Stay up a little later. While my kids are going to bed, I jump on the computer and do some writing, clear out my email inbox, take care of a few other web tasks before bed. I can often get a good hour or so after the little ones are tucked away.
Both of these tips allow you to get a little extra work done to clean out your inbox or get some mundane tasks out of the way so that you can focus on your important task. Best of all, you can choose which one works for you, depending on whether you are a morning person or a night person.
I also like tip number 6
6. Go to a coffee shop or library. Sometimes you just gotta get out of the house and find some peace and quiet. If you’ve got a laptop, go be among grownups and do some work at a coffee shop. If not, a library is a great place to work, with free Internet connections and a quiet environment. Just make sure it’s not kids’ read aloud hour.
Sometimes a change of scenery can do wonders for you. Getting out of the house or away from the office may be just thing you need to finish that brief or motion.
We are starting to notice a couple of affects on the people that always work at home. The first was finding out they don’t get dressed until the kids come home form school. Another odd thing is volume of normal talking – for some reason, people who work at home most of the time are very loud in the office and can only use speaker phone. We also have seen the work-at-home-15 (this is basically like the 15 pounds you gain freshman year in college but you gain it instead from working at home).
I’m making this transition myself…I’m worried about the “freshman 15” or the one I had the “bar exam 15”. I think I’ll be about 1/3 library, WiFi coffee shop and 2/3 at home.