Monday, August 4, 2008

Separating Work From Home

By Rachel Rae


There's a common phrase, "what happens at work stays at work, what happens at home stays at home". Not an easy thing to do, but especially for the one who's work is at home. These people have unique challenges to find balance of these two roles.

Many jobs takes at least eight hours of your day sometimes more, and that being able to share time with your family is important. Talking about it is one thing, coming home and taking it out on your family is something else.

Strategy One: Use the drive home to focus on coming home.

Granted this is sometimes easier said than done, but you can use your commute time profitably, and is more geared toward those working outside the home. Begin to actively let go of the work day's problems knowing they'll be there tomorrow, and look forward to time with your family and what may be next.

Two: Come up with a Schedule

You might need to think outside of the box when you work from home. There's a tendency to put in more work hours when you work from home, simply because there's not clear boundaries of work hours. Maybe you can work after the kids have gone to bed, or early in the morning. But look at the schedule of your family and see if you can find times in their day when their needs are less and use that for work hours.

Strategy Three: Get Separate Phone lines

This will help create a division between work and home. Define work hours as much as you can. You can either have a cell or land line be one or the other. You can also have different phone rings for personal use to separate the roles. When it's not work hours, let those business calls go to an answering device.

Strategy Four: Have an Office that is separate from the rest of the house.

I know this isn't always realistic, but try your best to create a work space. Is there a spare room? There are beautiful little room partitions that you can get to help make a workspace. It's important for you to be able to get up and walk away from work, plus it helps in keeping family members out of the work area.

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