Category Archives: Office Logistics

How to Work at Home (Without Doing Too Much or Too Little)

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I’ve been working as a solo professional for about 13 years.

When I started my first business, Blueberry Babies, it seemed only natural to get a “real” office, something out of the house and “legitimate.” And so I signed a lease that very first year.

Since then, I’ve had several offices and moved my businesses many times. And although it took me a little while, I finally realized that working at home is the place for me.

So about three and a half years ago, when I became RocketGirl (yea!), I got rid of the filing cabinets and clunky furniture in my office, shredded every piece of paper I didn’t need and moved back home.

And I’m staying, because I love it. I have no commute, I can wear whatever I want to and, not only do I not have to pay additionally for rent, phone, Internet, etc., I actually get to deduct part of my household expenses on my business taxes. How great is that?

But there’s a down side, too. When you work at home, if you’re not careful, you might start to actually live at work. Plus, there’s always something to distract you…dishes in the sink, dirty laundry, food in the fridge, or friends calling you on the phone to chat.

Over the years I’ve come up with some rules of the road to help keep me on track in my home office. Here are the three most important:

1. Establish Regular Work Hours. Decide when you’re going to start working in the morning and when you’ll end. I start work at 10 am every weekday and consider myself “at work” until 5 pm. Sometimes I’m there earlier, sometimes I’m there later and sometimes I need to leave for a personal appointment (same as I did when I had an outside office). But when I do, I’m conscious that I’m “leaving work.”

Decide if you’ll routinely work on the weekends. When I first started my business, I worked constantly. Now I only work on weekends if I want to, or so that I can take time off during the week to do something else.

As part of establishing work hours, you’ll also need to figure out when to turn off the computer and when to stop looking at your phone. My office is in the dining room, which means that I can see emails coming in while I’m having dinner…unless I turn off my monitors.

2. Clear Your Mind. I need to get a few things done before I sit down to work, or I’ll be distracted all day by what needs taking care of at home. So I start the day by cleaning the kitchen, making the bed, and answering all my personal emails. I go to the store to buy groceries, make my personal calls and run any necessary errands.

That way, when I sit down to work, I can focus entirely on my clients.

3. Clear Your Desk. It’s important to take all the non-essential or non-client work off your desk. Otherwise, it’s tempting to work on vacation plans, pay your personal bills or count up how many boxes of Girl Scout cookies your daughter has sold.

I think we’ve all experienced the phenomenon of the evaporating day. For those of us who work at home, it can feel as if we’re working because we’re sitting at our desks, but sometimes we realize that no client work has been accomplished at the end of the day. Clear all that personal stuff away.
There are endless benefits to working at home. I mostly love that when something does come up and I need to take a phone call or bring something to my daughter Emily’s school, I have the freedom to do so.

Now if only I had a solution for staying away from the fridge!

When Disaster Strikes

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Last week my client Sara called me in a panic. She’d been having trouble for a while with her office manager, Michelle, and things had been getting worse. It got so bad that, last Thursday morning, Michelle just grabbed her stuff and walked out the door for good.

Sara was unsure about what to do next. We had a long talk about Michelle’s responsibilities and how we could bridge the gap until she could be replaced.

I asked Sara questions about whether or not she had Michelle’s passwords for her computer, voicemail, and company email account. No, she didn’t.

Ok, what about other things Michelle took care of, like where to make changes to the company website? “No clue,” Sara replied.

That’s trouble.

Sara and I sat down and made a list of the information we’d have to get so that she could continue to run her company smoothly. It’s going to take a bit of time and effort , much more than if Sara had planned ahead for this kind of disruption.

Next time, we’ll make sure she’s got a handle on the following things:

  • The name of the company that hosts her website, email and domain name (URL), and passwords for each. She’ll need these if her email ever goes down, if she needs to make a new email address for a new employee, if the website needs to be updated, or if there’s any kind of overall problem with the site.Knowing where the domain is hosted allows you to keep it current.If you don’t, it could expire, and, the site will suddenly disappear!
  • Software CDs that shipped with her computers; product keys/activation for all her applications. It’s not unusual for software to stop working. When it does, it needs to be reinstalled. Other times, you may need to “reformat your hard drive,” which means putting it back to the way it was when you first took it out of the box. If that happens, you aren’t going to want to purchase your software again.The activation keys are antitheft controls and proof of purchase. They allow you to unlock the software, which is something you can’t always do with the disks alone.
  • Instructions regarding data backup. Again, you’ll only need this when disaster strikes, but if you lose your hard drive, your laptop is stolen, or some nasty virus visits your company, you’re going to need to know how to restore everything from backup. (Not backing up? Read my previous newsletter on this topic here.)
  • All your passwords in a safe, organized and secure place.This includes all of your employees’ passwords. You’ll want a copy in electronic form and off-site so that ,no matter what happens, you have access to them. This includes the password to your wireless network (Hint: You’ll often find this printed on your router somewhere).

Ok, those are the big pieces. And while it’s never a happy day when a key employee leaves unexpectedly, for whatever reason, there’s no need to compound the loss with these additional problems, all of which can be prevented with just a little bit of pre-planning!