Home office expert's guide to working from home/home office tips
Working from a home office never felt so cool
This time of year, many businesses slow down and take care of the annoying tasks they haven’t had time to deal with all year. Some people are still wrapping up loose ends, finalizing contracts and planning ahead for next year, but for the most part, businesses are getting ready to enjoy the break between Christmas and New Year’s.
Those few quiet days are the perfect time to clear out your home office and get organized. Start with these tips: [Read more...]
The show Hoarders is an extreme example of clutter gone wild. I’ve watched only a few episodes, but I’ve seen enough to know that there’s more to the stacks of stuff, and rooms filled with fast-food boxes, newspapers and items that the owners can’t possibly throw away, than just the inability to get organized.
Your home office may not resemble anything close to the homes on Hoarders, but consider how much you own, how much you need, and why you’re still holding on to things you no longer use. Even if you didn’t pay for anything in your home office, the clutter may be costing you more than you realize.
I’m the first to admit that I’m an office supply addict. If I like a product’s design, color, and even material, it’s hard to resist buying it for my home office. But after donating more supplies than I care to admit, I don’t buy anything unless I know it will serve a specific purpose.
Consider a few things before you shop for more office supplies.
As much as I enjoy working from home — I’m the first person to try to convince anyone to keep his or her overhead low and set up shop at home — I realize that a home office doesn’t work for every business.
At some point, for whatever reason, it may be time for you to move out of your home office. Consider whether any of these reasons for leaving home apply to you.
As your home-based business grows, you’ll probably need more employees (unless you want to use freelancers and virtual assistants instead of an in-house staff). That means you’ll need more space for everyone to work.
Sure, your staff could spread out in the chairs and sofas in your family room and work on their laptops, but that’s not an ideal situation.
One of my clients ran an Internet consulting business with a staff that filled his home office, overflowed into his dining room and took over his family room. His family finally convinced him to rent outside space for himself and his staff. [Read more...]
Garage owners usually fall into one of three categories: those who fill every square inch with things they don’t need, those who keep their garage obsessively clean and organized, and those who start businesses in them.
The third type is more important than the other two types, especially when it comes to making money. Those are the people who have figured out that a garage is a viable option for a home office.
But unless you enjoy sitting at your desk in the winter with your teeth chattering, or you like sweating like a marathon runner in the summer, you’ll have to make a few adjustments to convert your garage into a home office. [Read more...]
For years, my clients have told me how frustrated they are that they can’t handle paper once. They look at a piece of paper, put it in a stack, look at it again later and the cycle continues.
They usually have a few reasons for stacking papers instead of taking action including:
A few days ago when I was finally on a roll and tearing through my To Do list, I reached over to grab something on my desk and knocked a full glass of Crystal Light grape drink into my laptop.
Crap!
A long list of “non-family-friendly” words flew out of my mouth as I grabbed my laptop and turned it on its side. The drink didn’t drip out, it gushed out. For the record, cussing does nothing to dry out your computer, but it may ease the pain a bit.
The next thing I did was to call my Mac guru, Chelanie Israel (“Miss Mac”). She gave me ideas for drying out my computer and told me to call in a few hours if it still didn’t turn on. A few hours later my computer was officially dead, so I scheduled an appointment to meet with Chelanie [Read more...]
When you work from home, your family’s schedule or your clients’ time zone may affect when you work, but other than that, you can set your own hours.
Lately, though, I’ve talked with some home-based business owners who think that if they’re not working 9-5, the way they did in their corporate job, they’re probably not as productive as they should be. They say that they’re working late at night, as early at 5 a.m. or whenever they can “get into the flow.”
Last week I asked a few business owners about their work schedules. They told me that their traditional and not-so-traditional work hours work for them for a few reasons. [Read more...]
Last week I e-mailed a few home-based business owners and clients about goals and whether or not they set them. I found out that half of them do and half of them think goals are a waste of time.
Truth be told, I stopped setting goals at the end of last year and finally started setting them again two months ago.
Why? Because they work.
In my “Need to move your business forward?“ blog post, I focused on the fact that if your business gets off track, it’s a good idea to look back and figure out what worked before. I needed to kick my business up a notch and realized that what had always worked before was to set goals. [Read more...]
Have you ever noticed that on some days you’re incredibly productive and have something to show for all the time you’ve spent in front of your computer, while on other days not so much?
When you work for yourself, it’s easy to feel that you’re always playing catch-up or running in place. We all have days like that…some more often than others.
One of my clients described it as feeling like a hamster on a wheel. She was on the go constantly, but never accomplished anything.
There are a few ways to get off the hamster wheel.
#1. Determine what your time is worth. Are you spending time entering e-mail addresses into your contact management program, updating your Web site, or handling tasks that someone else could take care of? If so, hire someone to help you. You could hire a virtual assistant or a freelancer to take care of routine tasks that are taking you away from handling moneymaking tasks. [Read more...]
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