Working at home, from home, in your pajamas, in the nude, at the
beach, working from bed or the easy chair - these are all the images and
joys of home working that Kate and I enjoy and many others too. Kate
and I sell Real Estate; that is perhaps the most popular telecommuting,
work at home; pick your own hours job, in the country.
There are
some difficulties that go with working at home. Perhaps half of the
people who start working from home don't succeed, mostly due to lack of
personal discipline or family discipline.
There are freedoms of
working from home and along with freedoms go responsibilities. Those
freedoms of working at home can also be challenges to responsibility
which will lower your production and moral as you fail to meet deadlines
and quotas.
I have been telecommuting or teleworking; since we
imported the term teleworking from the Brits and it's now used by our
Federal Government; and believe me I would rather work from home and my
car than from a cubical. Since I entered the work force, I prefer me as
my boss and get more done that way. I get to decide importances and have
seldom found a boss that is not prone to wanting sillier busy-work than
I'm willing to do.
One boss I had, my brother, had over 150
pieces of paper to fill out for selling a mobile home. On my own, I used
two - the sales contract and the certificate of title. In the 8 hours
it took me to fill out the 150 pieces of paper, I'd get "interrupted" by
sales calls and showings of homes, so the paperwork of one sale took a
week at times.
As a home-worker I get to determine what works and
what doesn't. One boss I had, a client who bought about 50 properties
from me, was convinced that I should advertise her properties for sale
with no price - so I would get calls. That was, and is, stupid. I did
not want calls. I wanted prospective purchasers.
One of my clients
wanted me to run these blind ads, ads with no price and I wouldn't do
it. So, he placed an ad in the New York Times and another in The Wall
Street Journal. "Waterfront home, 3 BR, 2BA, Fireplace, Boat Dock, Scrn
Prch, at the Beach -- $39,000" and put my phone number on the ad. I got
several hundred phone calls and not one, that's right not one, was a
prospective purchaser. Why? Because it was a trailer on a rented lot in a
trailer park and it was 500 miles from New York City. His idea was to
make the phone ring; an altered priority. Now, when you go to my web
site you will find properties for sale that tell everything about the
property and usually with a map.
You see I don't want calls that
are not interested in what I have to sell at the price I need to get. As
my own boss I do the ads my way and not based on somebody else's "idea"
of what is right or workable. These freedoms, chief among them the
freedom FROM idiocy of bosses, are precious. However, I also have to
find out what works and take chances without a boss to blame the errors
on.
Working at home is great, but not easy. To excel; to make it
even, you must have exceptional personal discipline, organizing skills
and persistence. Those who work less at home than in the office will
certainly make far less working at home than working in the office. In
the office you may take a thirty minute coffee break and not get caught.
At home, with that sort of discipline, your coffee break may go on for
hours or even days. Or you may just sleep in and not even get up to make
the coffee. for hours, days or weeks. And there goes the rent or
mortgage payment and there goes the house.
Working at home is
freeing. There is no dress code. You can work in your pajamas, your
shorts, or even work at home in the buff - naked. However, we all know
that when we dress up, at least some of us act more professional. And
with no bosses slipping by the cubical to check over your shoulder -
what are you working on?
I will tell you this: when I did some
work as a business consultant for a large consulting firm - the PRIMARY
CAUSE OF BUSINESS FAILURE WAS COMPUTER GAMES. Believe it or not, almost
every one of the businesses that was going under and had to hire us had
one or more people playing Solitaire or some other computer game dozens
of hours a month. Most of the time it was the boss, his wife, his
girlfriend, or all three that were bankrupting the business with
solitaire or Doom. When no one else is forcing you to produce - some
people won't. Here are some reasons that those who have failed at
telecommuting have failed.
Lack of Family Discipline: When you
work at home you can also tend to family and that is great. I love it.
However, it also allows for magnified interruptions. Child care can
easily consume more than an entire day, if you don't learn to discipline
your children in an effective and nurturing way. If you just yell "Be
quiet I'm working." They will find a way to get your attention - no
matter what - and it will often be at just the wrong time - like when
Mr. Big is on the phone, or when you have procrastinated and the
deadline is NOW.
If you must fix dinner for your husband, change
the baby, take the other three kids to all those dozens of lessons, meet
them at the bus, do the dishes, vacuum the floors, do the laundry, wax
the floors, oil the antiques, sweep the driveway and talk to your
several unemployed friends on the phone. then you won't likely succeed
as a telecommuter.
Older kids are even more of a challenge if you
are not willing to raise disciplined kids - and there are very few of
those these days. If you have no kids, but have dogs, parrots, hobbies,
books, TV shows, and all sorts of other interests that take you away
from production - you won't make it either. How would you like to employ
someone who could only work when there was nothing else taking a senior
priority in attention?
Food: Snacking, gourmet cooking, coffee
making, refrigerator door swinging and ice-cream eating can take a huge
amount of time in a day. And, then you either must set aside twice as
much time for exercise, or set aside money for the new and larger
wardrobe. Many people, who work at home, could be said to be working
Chip-Side. Chips, dips, sodas, candy, a few extra snacks beside the
computer and soon you will need a larger, wider, more powerful chair and
reinforcing slats under the mattress. The upside is that your social
life will die and you'll have more time to work and pay for the food and
larger clothing. Can we say Tent Clothing?
Sloth: Laziness, slow
motion, procrastination and self-interruption are killers of the home
worker. If one of your motivations is to sleep in, you had better be
similarly motivated to work late. You will need to learn to produce, to
promote yourself, do market yourself and your product and
procrastination is self-destructive. Snooze and loose. One of my very
productive friends sleeps until 2:30 pm every day. He calls me on his
way to his first cup of coffee and I welcome him to the day with "Good
morning Lee!" he chuckles but in about 7 minutes he is off the phone and
planning his day over his next cup of coffee. He allows no
interruptions from any phones until 5:30 pm and works every night
through until about 3 am when he answers his e-mail and then goes to bed
a little after 4 am. He is a home designer and his clients are builders
who take care of building during the day and talk with him from their
home to his, at night. He is not sloth. He just works the night shift
and does it well.
My youngest son is an artist, a very successful one: http://www.AbraxasArt.com
He works best from afternoon to early morning as well. There are many
who work at home that work the graveyard shift and find that working
when others sleep, allows them to be more productive and creative. So
sleep in if you will or take off early if you will, but doing both will
knock you out of business. When you work at home, you work from to-do
lists, appointments scheduled, and goals set. But, if you don't get
enough work done in a unit of time, you won't get paid well. You must
learn to plan your work and work your plan, or else.
Communication
Sins: If you spend any time on frivolous e-mail, phone calls, faxes,
meetings, stops at the coffee shop, golf, tennis, poker - and they are
not planned to produce income - you will soon chat, gossip, play and
fritter your income, savings and life away.
Yes, I WORK at a
coffee shop nearby. They have high speed network lines for my laptop. I
also wear my Logo hat, my business name pin on my chest, and have a
large name and business card taped to my computer lid, so that it can be
easily read from a distance as I work. I also make a couple of phone
calls a day to those in related businesses, such as my friend the home
designer.
I do a lot of e-mail and anyone who sends me forwarded
junk is chastised, every time. Anyone who sends me hoaxes is sent back
the hoax reference and I send it to "Reply All" as the sort of people
who send that stuff send with everyone's address visible about 99% of
the time.
I also get quite a little bit of email, unsolicited,
from some of my contacts about things which I'm not interested in. I
thank them and let them know what I AM interested in and that I only
want that, in a nice way. I get a few hundred SPAM a day. My filters
handle all but a few. The rest; I speed read most of it and often find
something I can use for my own marketing, not often, so I spend an
average of about 2 seconds on each mailing.
I stopped by another
home-worker a few months ago and he was playing solitaire, taking calls
about jokes and gossip, and was constantly involved in frivolous e-mail.
Last week he got a salaried job, at just about minimum wage, he made
almost nothing working at home.
Communication sins include
incoming and outgoing communications. Television, talk radio, music,
telephone, entertaining web sites, porno, dating sites and chat, social
calls coming or going, are all time stealers and production killers.
Slovenliness:
When you work in a multi-tiered, hyper managed, upper-management,
middle-management, worker bee, hierarchy and each level checks and
double checks all the levels below and edits everything on the way up
the line or out the door - you may find much of that missing when you
work at home. You must learn to be your own editor. You must learn to be
your own manager. You must learn to be your own Quality Control and
Efficiency Expert. If you let slovenly work out your door, off your
desk, in the mail or e-mail; you certainly and simultaneously send a bad
message about your worth and professionalism. Doing slovenly work will
result in slovenly pay.
Home Sweet Home Syndrome: If you are
accustomed to turning off the productivity switch when you arrive home,
it may be nearly impossible to learn that home is where the job is. If
you are used to kicking off your heels, slipping on your robe, lounging
in a hot tub with a book and candles, lying on the couch with the paper
or any of the myriad activities of a leisure home life; you may not be
able to work at home productively. And we get right back to the crux of
it all - self-discipline.
Drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco, Sex and Even
Music: A glass of wine at home, after work, can be wonderful. A glass of
wine while you work at home can be horribly anti-productive. A smoke
break at work is at worst embarrassing, at home, you can easily develop a
two, three or four pack a day habit and you slide into chain smoking
and larger and larger ashtrays. If you are a "recreational" drug user
and work at home, you can easily get "hooked on that feeling" and that
feeling is not one of accomplishment.
And, oh the wonders of
staying in bed with your lover, of afternoon delight and hot nights -
but it can soon eat up the day. Many, many folks enjoy relaxing to
music, dancing to a tune or otherwise letting good music of their choice
take their mind into the sublime. That is not where work gets done. If
your mind is on the music, it is not on the job. Concentration is a
primary requirement of working at home and without it you will soon be
incompetent and unpaid.
Workaholism: Workaholics are often
stressed out and need to go home once in a while for a break, or perhaps
a break-down. If you are driven to work day and night, as I am, make
certain that you love your work so much that you'd do it as recreation.
Fortunately I love my work so much that it is not work to me at all.
Part of the reason is that I only do the kind of work I love and not any
other kind; there are a few things that other Realtors do that I don't
do. But, I take the energy that I could use doing those things I don't
like and put that much more energy into the other 99% of my profession
that I love.
Yes, I'm up before dawn and work often past midnight -
today is one of those days - but there is no part of today or many
other days that I do anything I don't love. Yes, I was out with a
prospective client from 5 pm to 9 pm, came home to 83 e-mails and now
I'm pounding out another article and NOT ONE SECOND of that time was I
unhappy about what I was doing. I love it all. Darned good thing!!!
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