Fabulous Bargains! by Stephanie Gallagher

Author:Stephanie Gallagher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

5

YOUR BUSINESS

The really cool thing about working at home, whether you’re self-employed or telecommuting, is that you can go to work in your pajamas. This is really great—for the first week. By the second week of living in your pajamas night and day, you discover the heretofore unappreciated benefits of getting dressed. Like being able to greet the Fed Ex guy at the door without scrambling to put a robe on. But hey, you still get to wear tennis shoes to work, although I’m told everybody does that now.

The second really cool thing about working from home is that you don’t have to get involved in any stupid office politics. No racing to get behind your desk at 9 A.M. so the boss can see you’re there on time. No lingering at the fax machine at 6 P.M. so the boss can see you’re working late. No gossip around the water cooler. In fact, no interaction with the office at all. Just you and the squirrels outside your window and last night’s laundry that needs to be folded and that leftover pie in the refrigerator.

Okay, so working at home isn’t always a picnic. Indeed, a lot of people have a hard time coping with distractions when they work at home. Sure, you get rid of all of those office annoyances, like the pushy secretary who has to give you a blow-by-blow account of her weekend with her mother, but at the same time, you take on all the distractions of being home. So you putter. And tidy up. And eat. And eat some more. A lot of people gain weight when they work at home. After all, there’s nobody there to tell them not to take a coffee (really, cake) break. No time constraints on how long to take for lunch. Nobody to fear looking foolish in front of for stuffing a whole twinkie in your mouth at once (not that I would know about such things).

The point is, working at home offers a lot of freedom, but if you are going to make sure that freedom doesn’t destroy you, you have to take some steps to protect yourself. It helps if you have a network of other people who either work at home, share your profession, or at least live in the same neighborhood, just to have a live human to talk to once in a while. It also helps to get out during the day, if only to go to the post office. And it’s a good idea to adopt some structure to your workday, even if you’re just starting out and aren’t busy. Because eventually you will be busy, and then you can find yourself working all the time.

Perhaps nowhere is the financial impact of time more obvious than in your business. Sure, you could figure out how to repair your own fax machine and you might save a few bucks, but how much time will you spend doing it? And couldn’t you make more money putting

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