Working From Home: How to Maximize Your Time, Your Home Office and Keep Your Job

Working From Home: How to Maximize Your Time, Your Home Office and Keep Your Job

If you finally have the chance to work from a home office, you have made it into the new world of business. With this great privilege are a few hazards and some very unique responsibilities. Adherence to these key recommendations will actually have you more productive and more successful than any geo-specific office job, not to mention the time and money you'll save by not commuting and eating lunch out. I highly recommend seclusion, leveraging technology to keep up appearances, time management, work banking and constant contact with your central offices to maintain your continued employment. The days punching a clock or seat in the butt working are a thing of the past for you.

Seclusion: With a 2 year old and a dog, finding the quiet time to hold a productive teleconference can be a challenge. I'm very proficient with my mute button on my iPhone, as I wait for the crew to come build my home office in my garage. If you, like me, don't have the luxury of simply having a room you can convert in your house, you may find you're doing quite a bit of business at Starbucks. I highly recommend it, except for the conference calls, unless you'd like to add a soundtrack of music and a cacophony of barista activity. The Wi-Fi is free and the drinks are caffeinated. It always amazes me, when I stop and look around, the variety of people who regularly conduct their business at the local coffee shop. You'll see lawyers meeting clients, CEOs conducting interviews, students working on their classes, salespeople making cold calls and meeting clients, friends reconnecting, first dates and anything and anyone else you can think of. I wouldn't be surprised to look up one day from my e-mails to see a cloak and dagger arms dealer conducting a transaction.

When it comes to seclusion, you really just need to find that quiet place where you won't be disturbed and have the technology to work quietly and productively in that space. I've taken conference calls in my car and tethered with my iPhone. Some urban locations have communal office space you can rent, if your budget allows. These special offices are for individual business men and women who don't need a large office space but do need all the amenities of a larger office. Renting your own space at one of these locations starts at about $300 a month with scalable services and goes up from there. Find the place that works best for you and leverage it to maintain your appearance.

Leveraging Technology to Keep Up Appearances: There are many people at your company's offices who hear the words "home office" and they immediately imagine you sleeping in and lounging around your house, maybe running a few errands then taking a nice afternoon siesta. You have to constantly counter that image. I learned this lesson a long time ago when I was working at a computer job. Everyone saw me at my desk working but had no idea what I really, really did. They thought I just surfed the internet all day. When the layoffs came, I was in the second wave. When I told my boss "That's fine, but you need to know I have V, W, X, Y and Z deadlines." They hired me back on the spot for whatever hourly rate I decided, and it was a very, very high rate I decided upon. Still, I could have avoided the layoff had my superiors known the extent of my work.

With my home-based job, I leverage technology to maintain my constantly busy appearance. In addition to my continuous availability via cell phone, I use Skype, instant messaging, e-mail and a shared folder program called Dropbox http://www.dropbox.com/ to constantly reach out to people and establish my "always on task" reputation. With the shared folder I am able to designate certain people at the company office who can access the folder. Every time I modify a file in there, people at the main offices have a little popup in their icon tray that designates the file has been changed or modified. It only appears for a second, but that second reinforces that I'm at my computer and working for the company. I also respond as instantly as possible to instant messages.

People like to know you're online. I am actually working much harder than I would be in the company's office, where I may be chatting with someone about their weekend, attending a constant stream of office parties or grabbing my fifth coffee. My company's offices are on the east coast and my home is on the west coast, so I make sure to be online by 5:30 AM every day. I don't want people seeing me logging in at 11:00 AM their time when they're logging out at 2:00 PM my time. That would look like I'm only working 6 hours a day. I do not want to leave that impression with them. If your office is in an international location, large chunks of overlap may not be possible, but you should still plan on popping online during their workday to establish your "always on task" appearance.

Consider also publishing your calendar and making it accessible to people at your company office, especially those signing your checks. Then, if you're offline at a meeting with a client they'll be able to see that. This will guard against them thinking you're simply off to the beach. I update my published calendar in that shared folder so everyone can see. This is especially important to me because I live in sunny Southern California and my company's offices are in snowy Michigan. It's easy for their minds to wander to images of me sipping Margaritas on the beach. Appearance is everything and you need to make certain you appear busy, which you areeven though you may actually be at the beach meeting a client. This leads to effective time management, as well.

Time Management: Though you want to let the company offices know how hard you are working, you also need to manage your time to include the things you need to accomplish in your personal life. Make sure you don't end up working through your lunch break every day. Take the time to prepare and sit down and eat your sandwich away from your computer. Take your dog for a daily walk. Putter around in your garden for an hour. Use your lunch break to do your workout DVD and improve your health. Run that occasional errand to the grocery store or the dry cleaner. Knock off work early sometimes and cook dinner for the family. In short, define your start and stop times and try to not vary too much, but do take the occasional short offline time to maximize your time at home. If you don't, you really will be living your work without escape. Your relationships with your home's co-inhabitants will suffer greatly.

Use this opportunity to expand and enrich your life. I know, at least for me, my relationship with my 2-year old has grown considerably. We find the time to read together, play together and have fun together. In contrast, his daddy isn't coming home at 6:30 in the evening, reeling with stress from work and commuter traffic and needing another hour to really decompress and be human again. That's 7:30 in the evening before "daddy" appears again, and that's also bed time. Also, the advantage of starting work at 5:30 AM means that I'm working a little before he wakes up and stopping around 3:00 PM. That gives us a nice chunk of time to be buddies and just have fun. Even if you don't have children, managing your time effectively and leveraging it to enrich your life can lead to a better you, your being a better friend and your being happier and healthier.

Minimally, you need to stick to a few routines like showering and shaving. Sometimes you may need to also establish boundaries and guidelines with your significant other. Just because you are at home doesn't mean you have the time to do all the chores (laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc.) everyday. While you may want to help out here and there, time permitting, in order to create a happier and healthier home, you are working. Act like it and you'll have fewer problems. Use your time to your advantage to maximize your productivity.

Work Banking: Some people see work banking as a kind of devious practice, but it's your only defense against appearing to do spurts of work and then nothing. If you're working close to quitting time on an e-mail you plan to send or a file and it isn't immediately due, you might want to hold off on sending it until sometime the next day or on the weekend. It isn't time sensitive, but those at the company office see a steady stream of work from you. That's productivity not deviousness. If you were at the company offices, you prioritize your work and "mull" over some things before sending them on, why would your home office be any different.

Now, I have known some government workers who had individual cases they would delay submitting from time-to-time. They might have intensively worked for several hours straight on them and they know if they turned them all in at 5:00 PM they'd have a bunch of new cases in the morning. You know your work limits, so it's important that your "always on task" reputation doesn't find you working every single moment of every single day. Bank and stage your work to reflect consistency in your productivity, not one large body then "radio silence" for several days. That silent period will be interpreted as you're not working and that spurt of massive work will signal you're way ahead of everything and ready to take on even larger loads without a breath in-between. If you're going to die at home make it in your sleep not in your home office.

Constant Contact: In addition to maintaining your appearance as always available, you'll want to seek opportunities to reach into the main offices and participate. Don't be a pest just calling to chat or bother people with busy work or things you should already know. Remember, organizations that have meetings for the sake of meeting and planning other meetings are not dynamic enough to be successful. Schedule your teleconference attendance at critical meetings. If the company office is equipped with a nice conference room, you might Skype in to let them see your smiling face. Make sure you're not dressed in your scraggily concert t-shirt and bathrobe with uncombed hair, but you don't have to be in a suit either. Business casual dress will do. Also, make sure your background is appropriate and not bustling with activity more exciting than the meeting content.

If video conferencing isn't a reality, make sure you're keeping in phone contact and e-mail contact. You might even consider sending a pizza or cupcake delivery to the retirement party you obviously can't attend. It keeps your face in their minds. While the guy who slips off the company radar and still receives checks but does not work is good stuff for comedic movies, it's not an actual reality. Thinking it is could lead to you slipping off the company radar and into the unemployment office.

The key here is to not be a pest, a busy work assigner or incompetent with your inquiries. Maximize your time, keep it short and focused. Use your touch points with your corporate offices to get things done productively. A two minute phone chat to clarify or go over something is always a better use of time than a 3 hour conference.

As the most productive employee of your own home office, you're joining a large group of telecommuters, road warriors and entrepreneurs. As gas prices skyrocket, the cost of office space continues to rise and company's continue to upgrade their technologies and dispel the myth that "butt in the seat" is the most productive type of employee, you'll be joined by an ever increasing number of comrades. Set a good example with these key recommendations. Celebrate that you are free from office slacking and office gossip, but manage your appearance, time, work and communications to guard against the jealousy of others. Your productivity and success will show others that today's worker can truly work from anywhere and be more efficient than those cubicle, desk jockeys. Roll out of bed, hit start on your coffee maker, fire up your computer and go get them.

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