When you work at home you tend to spend more hours at your job. Your work calls for you. You sit down at 8:00 a.m. and work until 6:00 a.m. and sometimes you work longer days than that. You also stop a lot during the day, especially if it’s summer time and kids are home. I find I work a few hours and then I stop and take my son to whatever activity I need to take him to. Then I work a few hours and pick him up. Then I work a few hours and break for dinner or the family dog walk. And then I work again.
After a while, the lines between work and play become blurry.
The lines are further blurred because of the social networks. The people I work with, do business with, and network with are on the social networks, and so are my friends and family. Sometimes I don’t necessarily want my family seeing all my business updates, and certainly much of the stuff I send out is no one’s personal business.
I need my space.
Now, I know much of it, Ok, all of it, is my fault. I’m the one choosing to overshare on the social networks, and I certainly am the one who’s adding all these friends and followers. Plus, I’m the one creates my own business hours as well.
Creating boundaries after you operated in a certain manner for ten years is sort of like dieting after you put on a lot of weight. It doesn’t come off easy and changing habits is way hard
I love what I do. I’m not sitting at my laptop at all hours of the night because of poor time management (for the most part). Most of the time I simply can’t tear myself away.
Still, I decided it’s time to take my life back.
- Closed Facebook to all but family and personal friends: This caused quite a stir, and even though I told everyone on Facebook I was doing it, too many people took it personally. Especially many people I never met in person. I didn’t do it because of a “noisy” feed, or because I had too many friends. I did it because I wanted a place just to share with my friends and family without the rest of the world knowing my business. What surprises me is how many people feel I’m selfish or rocking a huge ego, even though I invited everyone who isn’t connected to me in the real world to interact with me on Twitter or G+. Half the people who I culled from the list didn’t speak to me at all on Facebook, but wrote to complain about being dropped. It was an interesting result.
- Shut off my Skype during non business hours: If I’m working, Skype is on. If I’m not working, Skype is off. I used to keep it on all the time so I could talk to friends and family, but it got to the point everyone assumed I was working, even if it’s a Sunday at 2:30 in the afternoon. Now, Skype is only a business tool. If it’s on, folks are welcome to contact me with work related stuff. If it’s off, it’ll have to wait. The people who need to reach me with business-related emergencies, know how to reach me via email, cell phone, etc. It got kind of off putting to put on my Skype on Saturday night and receive a barrage from people who wanted to know if they can speak at BlogWorld.
- Learned to say no: I’m a sucker for a good story. It’s why I used to have so many clients I never had free time. Then I learned to say no. I have a full time job and I’m writing what I hope is the first of many books. I don’t need anymore clients. Even if they have a good story.
- Stopped answering the business line on weekends: I have an office line for my full time job, and it rings all the time. And I used to answer it all the time. Until I realized people understand if you don’t answer the phone late on Thursday night or Saturday afternoon. Folks don’t respect my time because I let them. So I changed that.
- Family time is family time: In all my line blurring, my family had to put up with the most. Late nights on the laptop, neglected chores and no time spent doing fun things because I worked all weekend. Family time is family time and they should always come first. Period.
I will say this, when I worked a traditional 9 to 5 job, I certainly had more free time. I left my job at the end of the day and that was it until next time. However, I hope never to go back to that. I have the flexibility to do so many different things. I can work at home from my family room comfy chair, and break to drive my son to camp or a friend’s house. And darnit, if I want to stop and take the family to a movie, I can do that too. I can also focus better without having to deal with office politics, co-workers who do nothing but gossip or yack on the phone all day, and a micromanaging boss breathing down my neck.
Everyone sees telecommuting as being this wonderful and glamorous lifestyle. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything glamorous about it at all. There are perks, to be sure, but not glamour. While it does afford me the opportunity to be flexible and less stuffy, if I’m not careful lines become blurry. That’s the part I don’t like, the blurry lines.
How do you balance work and life when you’re home based? How do you keep those lines from getting blurry?
