When your home is your office

I find it reasonably easy to work from home since my wife and son are away all day and an empty house has less to distract me than a busy office.

However during the school holidays they are both at home and I find it almost impossible to get much work done.

I can understand why working at home would be horrible for some people, just posted on a thread in this forum about motivation. I'd say that the two topics are closely related. Working from home would be hard if you have low motivation.

You really need to be a disciplined person to work from home, TV, games console all in arms reach, not many people can do it.

That's without mentioning the fact that if your work from home your generally alone all day whilst everybody else is out at work. So loneliness also because a factor.

I worked from home for about two years, for the first year I couldn't believe how lucky I was, no travel costs, no additional cost for lunch, clocking off and being on the sofa within a minute of it striking half 5.

Eventually loneliness slipped in. I literally would not have the need to talk to anyone all day. SO my girlfriend would get home with stories about work and I would have nothing to say. People that go out for work take for granted that a big part of work is the social aspect.

I agree. I think if I did not have forums, I would be a hermit. lol. I work from home, and love it, mainly because I love what I do. But the time spent in front of my computer with not that much interaction can be a "downer". lol As a self proclaimed hater of shopping, I can seriously see a few advantages now.

I have to admit i hated working from home.

When Steve invited me to come onboard with him i initially started working from "home" which was a tiny flat just off the M5 in Oldbury as at that time i was going through a divorce - so maybe my mindset wasnt the best but i remember not leaving this tiny space for 3 days once & felt like i was going mad!!

When i moved back closer to my kids & rented a house for a bit i again worked in the back bedroom & didnt get on with that either - felt very isolated (i was used to working in an office with 20+ people) and my only contact with Steve was a weekly visit to him.

Then we got the office in Henley in Arden - bliss ! & since the move to the new office things are great - its just far enough away to have a nice drive in the morning to wake up & a not too bad drive home to de-stress in the evening

Sometimes when our office is at home we feeling relaxed and lazy, am I right? So the tendency there is we tend to be unproductive that's why its important for us to have focus and discipline when it comes to work. I read an article review about a software that will help us stay on top with our priority, help with our organization, allows management with proper time allocation and most of all enables us to evaluate our productivity. I thought about it and I realized that it is important for us to stay on track with our business so that we will be able to reach our goals.

Nice article. Working at home has a lot of advantages, no doubt, but I think I may feel a little bit lonely at home, without my colleagues .

I have found it more convenient to rent office space at a local managed office centre. This is inexpensive and I can use their other facilities at a reduced cost. Such as meeting rooms and secretarial services when needed.

Working from home can be useful but there is a danger of too many distractions.

Agreed, serviced office space can be extremely cost effective as they usually come as an all inclusive package including electricity/ heating, meeting rooms, kitchen space etc.

Thanks for sharing the link it is really good advice. Working from home can have many rewards but as I'm now living alone it can be rather lonely at times. Even a walk to the shop can help clear the mind and lets me speak with a few people.

I enjoy working from home, but it's good to have set hours and be able to shut the office away. I have a bad habit of just popping in to check emails and end up working all hours!