Terry – Home Office Insights

Best Practices for Working From Home – My Top 5

Making that jump to working from home is sometimes a big jump. We all know how to act in a traditional office for sure. But, working from home presents with some unique challenges, options, and paradigm shifting. These five best practices for working from home are at the top of many seasoned home officers. They certainly were practices that drastically improved my productivity and work success once I implemented them. Think about the following list and how you can apply to it your own work-at-home life.

Practice #1 – Dress for Success

I have been working from my home office for going on 18 years now. When my work life comes up in conversation at happy hour, a common question is, “So do you just stay in your PJs all day?” For people who don’t do it, working from home can bring up visions of sitting on the couch in pajamas in front of the TV with a laptop on their lap and a Diet Coke within reach. That may work for some; however, seasoned home office workers will tell you that getting dressed is important. You may not need a suit and tie or heels for sure but that working from home doesn’t mean to stay in PJs or sweats all day long. We tend to feel according to how we are dressed. If we are dressed professionally, we feel professional. If we are dressed in a day off or Saturday rainy day attire, well, we tend to be in the day-off mindset. The way you look establishes your mindset and how you feel about yourself and your day; dressing like the professional you know you are will get you in the professional work mode. Best Practice for Working from Home #1: Dress for Success.

Practice #2 – Establish A Work Schedule and Stick To It

Working from home opens the door to even more hours for work. You can convert your commute time to work time. You eliminate the office chat and gossip time. You lose the time walking too and from meetings and waiting for the person who called the meeting to get off the phone and show up. You can easily add a couple of hours a day or more just by working at home. The downside to this can be twofold: 1) you waste time on home stuff and 2) you work too many hours. If you are at home, there will always be bills to pay, laundry to deal with, and a house to clean. The dog wants your time. Friends think you aren’t really working so entice you with lunch and early happy hour. There might be dinner to get going. These things don’t tempt you at a traditional away-from-home office. It takes discipline to reject the temptation. As for working too many hours, this can be a real problem as well if you don’t literally shut your home office door. There are temptations to get one more article written, answer one more email (or any email that comes in any time of day or night), or work one more hour after quitting time (or two or three or the entire evening.) It is important to determine the number of hours you are going to work, when you will start, and when you will quit, and then stick to it. Don’t be late. Don’t leave early. Don’t squander away the time in between. Act like your boss is watching (even if you are your own boss!) Best Practice for Working from Home #2: Establish a Work Schedule and Stick To It.

Practice #3 – Establish a Home Office Space You Love

Working from home is awesome – and, it is difficult. At your traditional office, you walk into your office or cubical and your mind says, “Ok. I‘m at work now. Let’s work!” If you are working from home, there are more distractions, more fun or perceived important things to deal with, more ways to not work. This is why it is so important to establish your office space that signals work time. And, make sure you LOVE your office. If you are stuck in a dark corner of a guest room, loving your office might be hard to do. Take some time. Spend some money. Think it through carefully. What environment makes you happy? What makes you excited about working? How can you establish your perfect workspace? If you are creative, it won’t take a massive remodel or a ton of money. If you are fortunate, you have an extra room all to your home office self. If you live in more limited surroundings, you may need to find a desk that closes up – Think old roller desk that closes at the end of the day. Even if you go to the coffee shop every day to work, you still need a home office space that works for you. That space might be just on your computer and in your computer bag. Figure out what you need to to your best job in the way you are working. Then, make it happen. The key is that when you go to (or open up) your office, you feel ready to work at your best. Best Practice for Working from Home #3: Establish a Home Office Space You Love.

Practice #4 – Get Organized – Stay Organized

Organization is key to any office for productivity, for frustration prevention, for efficiency, and for avoiding that overwhelmed feeling. Everyone organizes in a different way and has different needs. And, everyone needs to get organized. This means organizing your computer file system so that you can put your mouse on any file quickly and begin working. It means organizing your paper in a file system so that you can find the file immediately. Take some time to analyze your work tasks and information. How should they be organized? Once you get organized, stay organized. Make a habit of spending a couple of minutes at the end of each day to organize what you worked on that day, emails that came in, tasks you completed or need to finish tomorrow, time sheets to update, invoices to get out, check to deposit, etc. Make a To Do list for the next work day. It really does make a huge difference when you walk into your office to a neatly organized space and an organized To Do list map of the day. Best Practice for Working from Home #4: Get Organized – Stay Organized.

Practice #5 – Keep Your Professional Attitude

It takes a special attitude to work from home productively and successfully. This attitude includes factors like being focused on work (not the unlimited distractions you might have in your home), discipline to stay at work, and conscientiousness in doing an excellent job in whatever you do for a living. Self discipline is critical. This means working even when there are more fun or even more pressing things to attend to. A professional work-from-home attitude also includes performing your duties with excellence. Your duties probably include at some level communicating, writing, organizing, managing projects and others, and performing your skill. Those with a professional attitude communicate so that others understand, communicate with customer service in mind, return phone calls and emails promptly, follow up on their communications, and learn the current communication technologies. Those with a professional attitude have learned how to write well and use proper grammar, punctuation, words, and formatting. Those with a professional attitude are organized so that they don’t wast time looking for information, redoing anything, and deciding what to do next. Those with a professional attitude, have learned the fundamentals of project management and use productivity project management tools to never let anything fall through the cracks. They also know how to effectively manage others and manage from a distance. Finally, those with a professional attitude perform their skills with excellence. They keep current, are constantly learning, and know how to self-assess so they know when they need to improve on what. The are conscientious, pay attention to detail, and do the best job possible – even when no one is looking. Best Practice for Working from Home #5: Keep Your Professional Attitude.

So Now What?

You are now one of the fortunate few who are thriving in your home office or you are making plans to join this awesome group of professionals. And, you get all the benefits that come with it. So take some time to do some self-assessing and see where you can improve (yes, we can all improve) in these five Best Practices.

So what are your own Best Practices for Working from Home? Share your experiences and insights in the comments below.

Happy Home Officing!

Terry

Terry@HomeOfficeInsights.com

Varidesk Proplus 36 Review – Help Prevent Sitting Disease

My Overall Rank: 9 out of 10

Price: $295-$495 (depending on size)

Best Place to Buy: Amazon.com

Guarantee: It has a 30 days risk-free guarantee plus year warranty.

Did you know that sitting disease is a real thing? You physician may not diagnose it using these words exactly; however, the term is becoming more common. It is often a subtitle connected to sedentary lifestyle. Sitting disease refers to the ill-effects of an overly sedentary lifestyle that happens when you sit for long periods of time during your day – in your car, at your desk, on your couch. Symptoms include poor posture, weight gain, back and shoulder pain, and fatigue. It can put you at higher risk for all kinds of sedentary-related diseases, too.

If you work from home at your desk all day, you are at risk. But don’t panic. There are many ways to combat the ill-effects. Take frequent breaks and stretch/exercise, go for walks, make exercise part of your daily routine, and stay active. The reality for many of us is that we MUST work at our computers. One Solution: The Varidesk Proplus 36 Standing Desk.

Product Description

Varidesk is a cool company that offers many solutions designed to make your work space more active. The Varidesk Proplus 36 is designed to allow you to both sit and stand periodically throughout the day making you more active and reducing your risk for sitting disease. This two-tier design fits on your current desk allowing you to use your desk while sitting. Then, when you are ready to stand up and work, it allows you to easily lift it to the right position. There is no need to move your computer or monitor. It all raises together and allows adjustment to the perfect, ergonomic height. The keyboard and mouse shelf moves up as well to the proper height.

The Upsides

There definitely pros to the Varidesk Proplus 36 model. The designers have obviously spent a lot of time working at a traditional desk and put thought into what is needed to easily work standing up.

Two-tier means that there is an upper shelf for your laptop and monitor or two monitors and then a lower shelf for your keyboard and mouse. These shelves are large to accommodate just about any setup.
Adjusting the Varidesk up and down is really easy. It is spring-loaded so very easy to lift when you are ready to stand and move down when you are ready to sit again. You can also adjust it to any of the 11 height settings. Personally, I tend to stand up and then sit down many times a day. It really is very easy to move the Varidesk into the up or down position. There is no fighting it at all.
It is very stable, even when raised all the way up. You don’t need to worry about the weight of your laptop and monitor tipping it over when raised.
It comes to your door fully assembled. There is no assembly whatsoever. Just take it out of the box and set it on your desk. No assembly! No tools needed.
It is really well constructed from industrial materials. You can tell that it is a quality product.
They have three sizes (30 inch, 36 inch, and 48 inch) to accommodate your desk and space.
It comes in black, white, and wood grain.
There are lots of great reviews.

The Downsides

It is a bit heavy (about 50 lbs, depending on the model). This isn’t something you will want to move on and off your existing desk frequently. Once it is on your desk, you will no doubt want to keep it there.

The maximum weight capacity is 30 pounds, so if you have really heavy monitors, you need to pay attention. Most monitors don’t come close to this, though.
Since it is heavy, you will want the desk holding it to be solid enough. It will work on most office desks.
I have seen a few negative reviews, especially about there not being enough room on the platforms to work. This isn’t my experience, however. I have a laptop and second monitor plus a keyboard and mouse. I find that I have more than enough space to put my calendar, note pad, and coffee cup. I personally use the middle sized Varidesk.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

I give Varidesk a pretty high rating because of its design, high quality construction, and ease of use. There are definitely lots of other options, but Varidesk is at the top of the list.

Considerations For Your Research

If you are used to sitting, you may find that standing up and working is not that comfortable. It might take a little time to get use to it. Try standing up for a short time every hour or so. Then make your stand up time longer and longer. Just like any exercise, it is best to work up to your goals.
I have seen some negative reviews about a lot of the popular stand up desks. These may be because those users are not using the products properly or are not use to standing up while working. Posture is important as is developing your “stand up desk” muscles. Work into it slowly and watch your posture. No slouching – either in the sitting or standing position!
Finally, read the information that comes with your standing desk so that you position it properly. You want your elbows at right angles and your monitor so that you aren’t cranking your neck up or down. Like any tool, there are proper and improper ways to use a stand up desk.

Happy Home Officing!

Terry at Home Office Insights

Terry@HomeOfficeInsights.com

Home Office Organization – Tips for Right and Left Brains

Somewhere along your path you no doubt have heard about right brains and left brains and how they are different. You probably instinctively know which way you lean. If not, go look at your spice cabinet. It will tell you! I get a lot of questions about the BEST way to organize a home office for the best productivity. The answer is as so many answers are – well, it depends. The good news is that you can use this insight into yourself for your own home office organization. The goal? To achieve the most productive and satisfying organization strategy in your own office so that you can spend your energies on your business.

Views of Organization

Calvin Coolidge is said to have said, “The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization.” Think about this. A trained army gets the job done efficiently – on time and under budget. A mob wastes stuff. An army can be massive but seem to work in unison striving for a common goal. A mob is just a lot of individuals doing similar things but acting individually. An army is directed – each soldier knows where to be, when to be there, what to do, and how to do it well. Individuals in a mob show up and make noise.

It’s the same with organization. It isn’t so much about how much stuff, but how each item works together towards a common goal, where it is, if it is available when needed, if it has a role and you know what that is, if it is useful and you know how to use it.

Some organization guru’s might tell you that to be organized, you have to downsize. They often say that you need to have a clean space for work and that everything needs to be hidden. That is definitely good advice for some. It might make others cringe. We each have a different type of brain. If you simplify it way down, we can each fall into right brain or left brain tendencies. Most of us probably fall into both camps to some extent. So, let’s focus on this assumption and dig a bit deeper: How do you organize for left brains and for right brains? The key here is that you do WHAT WORKS! Try some different strategies and assess your feeling of satisfaction and your productivity. This is the key. SEE WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!

Quick Anatomy Lesson

The brain is amazing. It is divided into two hemispheres that appear to be the same but work very differently. And they are designed to work differently but together. The theory is that most people are more dominant to some degree in the right brain or the left brain. This is just theory; however, you probably know where on the continuum you find natural, right? It is a pretty good theory and well studied. The first scientist to suggest this was Roger Sperry beginning in the 1960s. Many researchers have built on his work. There is still a lot we don’t know. There is a lot we do know as well.

The LEFT BRAIN does more:

Sequencing
Linear thinking
Mathematics and calculating
Depending on logic and facts
Thinking in words

The RIGHT BRAIN is different. It does more:

Imagining
Thinking intuitively
Appreciating of rhythm
Holistic thinking
Feeling
Artsy fartsy stuff
Daydreaming

We do know that one side isn’t really more active than the other in an individual and that you don’t use one side of your brain over the other. They work together. We do know that people with brain injuries on one side lose some of the functions of that side. It’s definitely complicated. We also know that for a given complicated action or thought process, you need both sides. For example, if you are measuring something, the left brain might dominate in doing the calculation where the right brain might dominate in making the initial estimate or comparing the measurement to something else.

Left Brainers

Many people tend to lean toward the left brain. Left brainers tend to strive for things to be more linear, sequential, categorized, structured, methodical, and logical. They tend to buy into the concept of “a place for everything and everything in its place” mantra. Their spices are often alphabetized. Their junk draw has dividers. Their closets are immaculate. Their floors are clear of clutter. You certainly know THAT person, right?

Color tends to be important to left brainers. They tend to be drawing to neutral colors that look organized, streamlined, and clean. Maybe they feed their artistic side with colorful highlights, trim, and focal points. (Remember that we all have two brains that work in concert!) Left brainers tend to look at the world in detail. It feels better if this detail is organized. The organized detail of a clean, well-organized desk is comforting and soothing.

Organization Solutions for Left Brainers

Closed containers – shelving with doors, file cabinets, drawers, solid baskets
Organizers (Think the Container Store!)
Baskets that hide piles
Doors and shelves
A labeler
A calendar that closes (or shuts down)
Silence or white noise

Right Brainers

Right brainers tend to be creative and imaginative, color-loving, out in the open, and creativity-driven. The left-brain concept of what most of us see as organization may not come that easy for those who lean right. This, however, doesn’t mean that right-brainers aren’t or can’t be organized. They may need to do it in a different way.

Instead of alphabetized spices, or office supplies, or bookshelves, the visual appeal is far more important than the logic if it all. They tend to like the stuff they are working on out in the open. They tend to buy into the “out of sight out of mind” mantra. If it isn’t in sight, you might forget to work on it. This obviously is NOT GOOD for productivity. Right brainers tend to look at the world as a big picture as opposed to the detail, which can be somewhat overwhelming. The clean, well-organized desk is just not that interesting or stimulating.

Organization Solutions for Right Brainers

Open and interesting storage shelves
Wire baskets that allows seeing the contents
Cubbies and rolling files
Color – pictures, flowers, art, painted furniture file folders, hanging folders, – anything that is fun to look at throughout your day and draws you in to work
Open windows
Twinkly lights
A calendar that stays open on the desk or wall and written in different colors
A marker board with colored and different thickness markers
Music that brings up the perfect emotion for the task at hand
Organizers (again, think the Container Store) in sight, on the shelf, on the desk, next to the desk, etc.

So Now What?

So these lists represent the extremes of right and left braininess. A lot of us fall into the middle of that bell curve, or somewhere in the middle with right or left leanings. What do we do? Well, we do what works for us. Organization is definitely an important productivity strategy. The way we go about organizing can be and should be different.

Try some open and closed storage strategies. Which are you drawn to? What makes you happy inside? Which ones stress you out?
Try some color and visual stimulation. How do you feel when you walk into your home office at work time? When you think about working in your office, what is the first image that comes to you? Is it a “Come to me” image or an “I so wish it were my day off” image.
Put an organizer in your drawer and on your desk. How do you use them? Can you easily find what you need when you need it? The goal is function and productivity.
Check out the container section of a big store and see what items you are drawn to. Better yet, take a field trip and walk through a container section or store. Analyze each item based on how you feel and how you might improve productivity. (And don’t let them put you in a box! What other way could you use the item in your office than how it is marketed.)
Move your furniture around. Face a different wall or face out from a wall. (I do this pretty often to change my perspective on work. It works! and so do I.)

Leave some tips in the comments below about what you have found to work and tell us if you are a right leaner or left leaner.

How to Track Your Time at Work

When I tell people I have been working from home for almost 15 years, I get a lot of questions. Don’t you get lonely? How do you have the discipline? Don’t you get distracted by laundry and house cleaning? Do you wear your pajamas all day? One frequent question I get that surprises me is how do you track your time at work, especially when you have more than one client you must bill.

I know that there are some great software applications out there:

SwipeClock
TSheets
Replicon
Mavenlink
Clockwise
Clockshark
and many, many others.

I have tried several and many have some excellent features. Prices vary. We’ll look more closely at these later on. For now, though, I want to talk about a work strategy that makes tracking time – and discipline for working at home – a lot easier. Personally, I use a simple Excel spreadsheet to track start and stop time for each project or client. I like the simplicity. It doesn’t really matter which too you use.

Accuracy

First let’s talk about accuracy. I have been on the other end of paying someone’s billable hourly rate. I expected that when I received an invoice for 50 hours at $60/hour, I actually got $3000 worth of high quality work. I expected that I didn’t pay for chit chat, bathroom breaks, laundry (from workers who worked at home), coffee breaks, non-related phone calls, work on someone else’s project, etc. When you break it down, $60/hour is $1/minute. Expanded to a full-time salary, that’s $120,000/year. Of course that is without benefits, if contracted labor, but still – not too bad of a salary even if you do subtract cost of benefits.

When I became a contractor myself, I transferred that attitude of accuracy in billing. I remember what it was like to really wonder what I was paying for and made the decision from the start to be as accurate as possible in my time tracking. My clients would only pay for the minutes I worked. It’s been 15 years and I am still diligent in this area. I think my clients know and appreciate this – and they seem to always come back for more of my time. They don’t even balk when I raise my rates every now and then. It comes down to honesty and diligence in tracking.

My Strategy?

My basic strategy starts with breaking my work time into full hours, or sometimes half hours.

STEP 1: I start a segment of work for one client at the top of the hour or at the half hour. This makes it easy to track the time. I can commit to one or two hours of fully devoted attention to that client’s project. I don’t look up. I turn off my email. I don’t answer the phone (unless it is that client). I don’t do anything else until my hour (or two) is up.

STEP 2: When the designated time is up, I then note it on a simple Excel spreadsheet that is all set up to do the calculations for me. I use a separate tab for each client and invoice date range to make it easy to create an invoice. I include:

The date
My start time (time in) and end time (time out)
Details about the specific work I completed
The total hours for the time segment
The dollar amount (time X billable rate).

STEP 3: I add any work related expenses to a separate part of that timesheet as well as any notes I might have.

The tool you use to do the tracking isn’t important. There are lots of great tools out there. Many will connect to your billing software and automatically spit out an invoice. That’s great! The point is, however, how you break up your time to be tracked. I found that if I didn’t actually “make an appointment” to work on a specific project for a specific client at a specific time, I would get scattered. And being scattered made tracking accurate time per client just about impossible.

I also find that I have to wait sometimes until the top of the hour or the half hour when my “client work appointment” is to start. This is when I throw in a load of laundry, get a cup of coffee, make some personal calls, walk the dog, etc. I get a ton of personal work and client work done! I find it amazing how fast I can vacuum the living room when I only have 7 minutes until my client work appointment starts!

The Result?

Honesty and Efficiency! This strategy has become a habit. It is efficient and focused. I find that I can get a lot more work done in a focused hour (or two) AND I can get the things done at home without even noticing by using those few minutes before my “client work appointment”. I feel confident when I invoice my clients that they are getting every minute of the dollars they are paying me. And, that is an important feeling.

What Do You Think?

This strategy works for me. What about you? What time efficiency strategy do you use to ensure that you give each client the minutes they pay for? We’d love to hear other strategies that work!

Home Office Paint Color Ideas

People often take for granted the power of color in a room. For most people, color can affect productivity, happiness, energy, and lots of other things. Look at the logos and branding of businesses around you. What does the red in McDonalds do for you? The next time you drive down the busy city street, note the main colors of fast food restaurants. Is there one color that you see more than others? What about the brown and yellow of UPS? Harley Davidson? Visa, Bank of America, PayPal? Big businesses pay dearly for color consultants who develop their logos and the look of their brands. These consultants have done their homework when it comes to what color does for the human psyche. Let’s take a closer look.

Yellow, Orange, and Brown

Yellow: Yellow is cheerful and warm. It encourages feelings of wellbeing and tends to inspire confidence. It may also produce anxiety, cause eye fatigue, and make babies cry more (when their rooms are painted yellow.) Maybe these last possibilities are not the best for the home office. It is recommended to use yellow in office environments only in moderation. Painting an entire office bright yellow may look warm and cozy; however, after a few hours, workers can be irritable, fatigued, and anxious. It’s best to use yellow – at least bright yellow – in small doses.

Examples: Business who want to send a message of optimism, warmth, clarity have lots of yellow in their logos: UPS, Mikon, Shell Oil, IKEA, Best Buy, Hertz, Subway, Sprint, CATapillar, Penzoil, Dennys

Orange: Orange reflects warmth and caution and tends to create enthusiasm and draw attention. Orange is exciting.

Examples: Companies with orange in their logo may be sending the message of cheerfulness, confidence, and friendliness. Think about Amazon, Starz, Harley Davidson, Shutterfly, Gulf oil, Hooters, and Nickelodeon.

Blue and Green

Blue: Blue reflects calmness and serenity and is the color used in most offices if they are not white. Men tend to prefer blue. Blue also tends to curb appetite, encourage thinking, and increase performance and creativity. Blue is great for conference rooms and collaborative spaces to inspire productivity. Light blue is a good color for creative spaces. In an office, blue can be found in accents, such as windows looking out to blue sky, fish tanks, water features, etc.

Examples: Blue is used by a lot of big corporations who want to send the message of trust, dependability, strength, and professionalism – think about the logos of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, AT&T, Ford, IBM, PayPal, Facebook, JPMorgan, VISA, Gap, CitiBank, Dell, hp, CBS news, Sears, Fox news, AOL, Skype, Linkedin, etc.

Green: Green reflects health and tranquility. It also encourages relaxation and a calm energy and symbolizes money, nature, and fertility. Blue-green areas tend to elicit calmness, openness, and trust. Olive colors tend to promote concentration for reading and learning.

Examples: In business, green sends the message of growth, health, and peacefullness. Think about the logos of Whole Foods, Animal Planet, Tropicana, Spottify, Starbucs, bp gas, and Hess oil.

Red, Pink, and Purple

Red: Red reflects high energy and urgency. It tends to evoke strong emotions, passion, intensity, and creativity and tends to motivate workers. It also tends to increase appetite. Red rooms tend to be emotionally uncomfortable. It may be best to use red as an accent color rather than a wall color. Some businesses paint employee lounges red so employees won’t stay there too long.

Examples: Many restaurants use red in their logo: Wendys, Popeys, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, KFC, Denny’s, Coca Cola, Lays, Frito Lay, Dairy Queen, Nabisco. In addition to increasing appetite, it sends the message of excitement, boldness, and youth. Think about Netflix, Lego, Target, Cannon, Avis, K Mart, Nintendo, YouTube, Pintrist, and Kelloggs.

Pink: Pink reflects love and romance. It is also thought to be calming. For a long time, they used pink in drunk tanks and prison cells thinking it would keep inmates calm; however, they found that living in pink did the opposite.

Examples: Businesses who want to address women in particularly tend to have pink in their logos: Barby, Oprah, Victoria Secret, National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Purple: Purple reflects wealth and success as well as wisdom and royalty.

Examples: Businesses who want to send a message of creativity, imagination, and wisdom often use shades of purple in their logo. Think about Yahoo!, Welches, Hallmark, Taco Bell, T Mobile, The Syfy channel, and Monster.com

Black, White, Silver, Gold

White: White reflects purity and optimism. It tends to create the illusion of space and often makes things less cluttered when white space is used in visual presentations and writing. White symbolizes positivity, innocence, and cleanliness (like in hospitals). It is also thought to be boring if all the walls are white. Bright white is highly reflective and can cause yey strain.

Black, White, Silver, and Gold: Black, white, silver, and gold tend to send the message of luxury and sophistication for obvious reasons.

Examples: Cadillac (black with a little red and gold), Lexus (black, silver, and white), Porsche (black with gold and red), Channel (black on white), Audi (usually silver circles over a red “Audi”)

Complex Colors

Complex color patterns tend to make a room seem busy and make workers in the room grumpy. They report that the tasks are more complex and demanding than they really are. Strong primary colors with lots of contrast can negatively affect attitudes and productivity.

What do you think?

So what do colors do for you? Individuals view colors uniquely. What do different colors do for you? What color is your office? How do you feel? How is your productivity? Let us know about your color experiences.

Who Works From Home? More and More Every Year

A question I get sometimes from those who just can’t see themselves working from home is “Who Works from Home?” The answer: More and more people in more and more professions. Let’s look at some of the examples.

Self-employed

Self-employed professionals are great candidates for working in a home office. Writers and editors, developers and designers, translators, computer programmers, teachers, tech support specialists, franchise owners, transcriptionists, virtual assistants, and any number of types of business owners and crafts people. The internet is full of many kinds of jobs for the self-employed. The overhead associated with an office can be prohibitive for those just starting a business. Working out of a home office helps tremendously with the expenses.

Telecommuters and Virtual Employees

Telecommuters are defined as those who work for a company, but do the commuting electronically through teleconferencing, file sharing, and remote access to their company’s resources. Virtual Employees are workers such as contractors and long-term freelancers. Forbes, in a 2014 article suggested that the percentage of telecommuters is from 30 to 45 percent. The trend has been established and it doesn’t look like it is going away soon. The reasons? Business’s needs for working around the clock, for hiring hard-to-find skill sets, for wanting to offer employees a work-life balance and flexibility, for participating in a global workforce, and for expanding their workforce pool.

Professionals Taking the Work-at-Home Dive

Many people are just fed up with work and are considering taking the dive to finding a home-based business. Warning: There are lots of get-rich-quick scams out there! Maybe 1 out of every 50-60 publicized work-at-home opportunities really pan out to true paying work. With that said, there are many ways to make money out of your home office. If you are jumping ship from your day job, be careful. If it is too good to be true, but probably is a scam – and work takes just that – work, at least to get started.

Retired, But Not Really

Retirement sounds great when you are in the middle of the 8-6 job with a bad boss, a long commute, a glass ceiling, and high stress; however, many people get their gold watch, retire, go on a vacation in the RV, and then find themselves wondering what to do with themselves. I think there is a coffee cup purchased by a lot of spouses of retired professionals that says: “How can I miss you if you never go away?” Many retired professionals go back to work and are desperately needed by the still struggling workforce. Retired professionals not only often become successful at their next career, but serve the rest of us as consultants, teachers, mentors, board members, etc. And the cool thing, they can often easily work out of their home office.

Part-termers and Moonlighters

Even working professionals often find themselves in other endeavors – part-time teachers, writers, developers-on-the-side, and hobbyists. Even part-time workers need effective offices and excellent work-at-home practices and habits.

Movers and Travelers

There is also a unique subset of workers who move around a lot. Those awesome spouses of active military, spouses of transient professionals, such as those who work as long-term consultants around the globe, all can benefit from working at home. There is also a great group of folks who travel for a living – journalists, writers, consultants, salespeople, RVers, travel bloggers, or people who work on vacation. There are special skill sets that can apply to the highly mobile professional.

The work-at-home trend is expanding each year. Think about the terms we use to describe them: eworkers, webworkers, iworkers, teleworkers, telecommuters, remote workers, mobile professionals, digital nomads, location-independent professionals, technomads, virtual workers, etc.

What do you think?

So if you are a work-at-homer, how do you describe yourself? Do you use a term that connects with bosses, clients, potential customers? Let us know what you have found that works and doesn’t work.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Working at Home?

What are the pros and cons of working at home? Well, there are several – on both sides – as there are to just about everything in life if you think hard enough. Working from home is no exception. There are numerous pros, if you set your home work environment up strategically. And, there are some downsides as well.

Pros to Working at Home

Work freedom and flexibility: Working from home often allows you much greater work freedom and flexibility. There is no one looking to see how busy you are, assessing how you do things, or judging whether you are day dreaming or critically thinking through a problem. You can often be flexible about when, where, and what you work on at any given part of a 24-hour day. Some people do their best work at 1:00 am while others tend to drift away and are gone for ever mid-afternoon. Working from home may be able to give you the freedom to work in a way that works best for you. Of course, you may still governed by needs of clients and bosses and other people’s work schedule. It really depends on what you do.

But think about it:

14% of Americans have actually changed jobs to shorten the commute
46% of companies that allow telecommuting say it has reduced attrition.
72% of employers say telework has a high impact on employee retention

Potential for higher productivity: People who work at home are often much more productive because the distractions of the typical office environment are – well, still at the traditional office. There is no water cooler conversation, no latest bad date story on Monday morning, no replaying of the Monday Night Football on Tuesday morning, no birthday parties, or whining, or countless other distractions. Now of course there’s Facebook, chat, the Internet, the laundry, the TV and Netflix, and the unwalked dog; however, these are within YOUR control. Fewer distractions means greater productivity. Also, a less-stressed and more satisfied worker also tends to perk up productivity.

Think about it:

Some big companies like Best Buy, British Telecom, Dow Chemical, and many others show that teleworkers are 35-40% more productive.
Businesses lose and estimated $600 billion a year in workplace distractions.
Sun Microsystems’ experience suggests that employees spend 60% of the commuting time they save performing more work for the company. (Pretty good deal for the company, no?)
American Express home-based workers produced 43% more than their office-based counterpoints.

No dress code: Few home offices have dress codes – I hope! You can throw away hose and heels and ties and jackets. Though some people say the can stay in their PJ’s and sweats for days and still do great work, showering is always a plus. We will talk more about dressing for success in the home office later; however, hose, heels, and ties are optional.

Convenience: Life is full for most of us. There are kids and errands and events and volunteering and house cleaning and aging parents and on and on and on. Working from home can be very convenient when the needs of others are a priority – if handled well.

No commute: We’ve already talked about the commute – and benefits of not commuting. You save a lot of wear and tear on your bank account, your health, your car, and your soul.

Tax write-offs: This isn’t a course on how to finance a home office. However, there are some pretty great home office tax breaks if you understand and follow all the rules. I’d see an expert on this topic before signing the bottom of your tax form.

Less stress: If done well, working from home can significantly reduce the amount of stress in your life. From the stress of commuting, wasting time at work, hard-to-deal-with co-workers, the frequent negativity and poor behaviors in the typical office, to the feeling of having things under your control, home office workers can really improve their life in the stress category.

More money: In addition to the money you actually make for doing your job, working from can add more money to your bottom line through the money you save by not commuting, through the money you save with unnecessary overhead, and through the money you make by being more productive.

Better work-life balance: This may be obvious, but if you have a great life with a spouse, kids, pets, friends, etc. and those things are at home, then working from home keeps you closer to the action. This is a top reason for many when deciding to make the move.

Cons of Working at Home

Working from the home office isn’t all fun and games, though, and it isn’t the end-all of professional success. Working from home is hard!

Requires discipline: It requires some serious discipline to get out of bed, get dressed, and get to work without first doing laundry, watching a movie, running errands, playing, etc. People who have little discipline and self-control either better stay in the office or develop some discipline quickly.

Requires technology know-how: Telecommuters must be comfortable with technology, remote access tools, teleconferencing software, and online tech support.

Requires self-motivation: Working from home also requires self-motivation: Like discipline and self-control, successful home office workers must be self-motivators. They can’t be the type who needs to be told what to do when. And they need to know when it’s time to learn new skills. Staying on time and on budget for your boss or client is essential and it requires some self-starting and lots of self-motivation.

Requires self-direction: Working away from a supervisor or team requires one to be self-directed. This means knowing what to do when and how to best do it. Often it means staying ahead of deadlines and maintaining a cushion for when things don’t go as planned.

Reduces the outside pressure to be busy: One thing that a lot of home office workers talk about is their ability to work when and how much they need without the feeling they need to look busy just because they are at work. Successful home office workers, especially those who are project-based, learn when they need to work hard and long hours on a project and when they can take a sunny afternoon dog walk to the park for a break or a long weekend with the family.

Requires office overhead and security: There are costs associated with working from a home office. The office setup, furniture, equipment, supplies, and security can add up. Some states have strict tax laws. Some communities and HOAs have rules against working from home.
May lead to isolation and loneliness: Working at home can be very lonely. The isolation is often a number one complaint of those who work full-time at home. People who thrive on the hustle and bustle of the busy and energetic office environment may find it a significant challenge to adapt to being by themselves. We will talk about some tips to overcome isolation, but it may mean that social life choices have to be changed so that non-working hours meet the social needs. Similarly, a lot of social interaction including lunch, happy hour, and after-hour gatherings are with co-workers. Home office workers often have to find their social network in other places.

May impact career advancement: Similarly, there may be some career fears from the out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality. Successful telecommuting situations must have performance-based measurement systems and productivity instead of “presenteeism” attitudes. And, telecommuters must maintain regular communication with their traditional coworkers and managers.

Loss of living space: It might not seem like a big deal, but the first time an overnight guest comes for a visit and the only guest room is now your home office, that loss of living space may become a very big deal. It is even more of a big deal for those who live in small spaces. We will talk about some innovations that can minimize the space needs of a home office so that an overnight guest every now and then doesn’t stop production.

Communication limitations: Many people say that it is hard to communicate effectively with coworkers, bosses, and clients when they aren’t face-to-face. For some, it takes some serious adaption to communicating via email, chat, phone, web conferences, and online video. Body language and facial expressions do provide a lot of clues to what’s going on behind a person’s words. Home office workers need to work to optimize their communication including learning how to best use technology and making some extra efforts to get face-to-face when needed.

Boss’s paranoia: Some bosses are just paranoid and assume that if you aren’t in the office you are on the ski slopes or playing Frisbee at the beach instead of working and so aren’t supportive of working from home. This can be a real problem for some business environment when telecommuting all of a sudden becomes an option. It is also possible that telecommuters fall into the “out-of-sight-out-of-mind” hole when it comes to promotions, advancement, special awesome projects, awards, or other recognitions. Each person’s situation is different. And though telecommuters may be at a disadvantage, there may also be things to keep your name at the top of the list.

Danger of overworking: Many professionals who work from their home office say that a big challenge is less in finding the discipline and motivation to work and more in overworking. The office is well – right there down the hall, so, one more hour, one more milestone, one more sales call is pretty easy to do. Leaving it at the office is also a challenge. We all have bright ideas in the middle of the night, but when the office is in the next room, it is easy to lose sleep and turn on the computer.

Harder to learn from coworkers: In many office environment, a lot of learning goes on – we all learn from our bosses and informal mentors, from those who have been there and done that, and from our coworkers. Working from the home can really dampen our learning environment. We will talk about how to gain some of the learning opportunities back by using some great online tools and optimizing our business social networks.

The Bottom Line?

Yes. There are numerous pros and cons to working at home. It may take some thought and work to realize the pros and mitigate the cons.

What do you think? What are your best pros related to working from home? What are your biggest fears? How have you overcome some of your personal cons? Post some of your thoughts and tips and tricks. Everyone of us could use some help!

Why Work From Home?

So why work from home? Why do some people decide to take the plunge (in some people’s mind) and decide to move their office either part-time or full-time to their extra bedroom, kitchen table, study, breakfast nook, or other reasonably suites space in their home? There are several common reasons people voice and no doubt unlimited individual personal and unique situation reasons. Let’s look at some top stated reasons first. Do any of these strike a chord with you?

Saving Money

A penny saved is a penny earned. Right? Well working from home saves a lot more than a few pennies. If you are a small business and don’t really need a store front to sell stuff, don’t have a lot of employees, and don’t need clients to come to your office much, a home office can make a lot of sense. With today’s cool technology tools, you can pretty much do anything at home as you can in a cubical/office/corner office/whatever. You can meet with bosses, clients, leads, project managers, assistants, and colleagues right from your desk using web conferencing or video chat tools, collaborate with clients and colleagues using Google docs and other online synchronous collaboration tools, and give and receive files using Google Drive or Dropbox type tools just like you were in an office and someone dropped a folder on your desk. The thing is, you don’t have to pay the extra overhead: rent, lights, computers and office equipment, furniture, Internet fees, phone fees, insurance for employees, tools, vehicles, equipment, business services, salaries, and on and on. Yes, of course you need these things in your home office and every office has its overhead, however, you don’t need to provide these things for a whole other office space. Some of it you probably already have at home – like lights, heat, and the Internet. All of this and more makes up your overhead – or the many indirect expenses necessary for and contributing to the continuing well-being of your business. How much extra are you adding to your home utility bills by officing there during the day? Some, but not that much. And, you can account for a big portion of the extra expense through your taxes.

In addition, think about the money you could save on commuting fees (gas and car maintenance, public transportation, parking, etc.) Some people find that they can save money in other areas, such as after school childcare, dog care, aging parent care, and so forth. Many find that they can get a full day’s work in by the time the kids get home eliminating the need for afterschool daycare! (The savings in commute time alone might make up these extra hours for some.)

According to GlobalWorkplace Analytics, if those with compatible jobs and a desire to work from home did so just half the time, the national savings would total over $700 Billion a year. (Yes, that is a B as in billion.)

Eliminating the Commute

If you live in a big city, the hours spent in traffic on the highway with road ragers may be a huge incentive for moving home. Even just eliminating this adventure a couple of days a week can improve your sanity! According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average commute time in the U.S. is 25.4 minutes. If you live in a big metro area such as LA or DC, it can be twice that or even more! First, translate your commute time to your billable hour rate. Really – Do the math! Let’s say your billable rate is $50 an hour and you spend 30 minutes in the car (or bus or train) each way. That is an hour a day – or $50. Counting major holidays, you have about 251 days a year to work. Let’s say you get an awesome 3 weeks for the beach, you now commute 236 days a year assuming you are in perfect health and take your vitamins so never get sick. If you do the math at $50 an hour and actually work (and get paid for) that extra hour each day instead of drive/bus/train, you will end up with over $11,000 more in your pocket. This doesn’t even include the cost of your gas, car maintenance, parking, train or bus fare, tolls, etc.

Gaining Time

With less commuting hours, not only will you earn the extra cash, you will save the wear and tear on your health. According to Princeton Professors Daniel Kahneman (Winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics) and Alan Krueger in their paper: “Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being”, the morning commute was at the top of the list of least enjoyable things in a person’s life – topping work, relationships, housework, and 15 more common daily activities. Additionally, if you are disciplined (yes, a very critical characteristic for successful work-at-homers), you may find that you are much more focused than at the office, especially if you have a job that requires focused, uninterrupted attention to the task at hand. Many professionals that work from home find that they have fewer interruptions (time wasters!), fewer drop ins (time wasters!), fewer meetings (time wasters!), fewer breaks (time wasters!), fewer non-work related chats with coworkers (time wasters!), and on and on. When they are at work, they are actually producing something. So, work gets done in fewer hours. Think about how long it takes to refocus on your task after you have been interrupted. Of course, the home office also has its own interruptors; however, at home, you are more in control.

Given the same amount of production, what would you do with an hour or two more a day? Play with the kids? Walk the dog? Exercise? Cook a healthy dinner? Watch old movies? Dive into a hobby? You really only hear from bored retired people that they have too much time on their hands.

Increasing Productivity

Another way a home office saves money and time is in productivity. Time is money – remember, time is worth your billable rate or how much you get done in a given hour of your salaried work. Think about how much time (billable hour) is wasted at the coffee pot, chatting about your coworkers latest cat disaster, attending unnecessary meetings that provide you with nothing you didn’t already know, and so on. Without these distractions and waste of your billable hour, you can end up adding to your bank account significantly, especially if you are paid by the hour. Even if you are paid by the project, more time means faster projects and faster projects means 1) happier clients, and 2) the ability to take on more projects – which means, of course, more money. Now often these distractions are a part of the social aspects that make work fun and satisfying, but work-at-homers can still get social without digging into their billable hour. Skilled professionals who have mastered working in their home office can trade these wasted hours in for money or time – either (or even both) is probably not a bad deal. Then they can plan their social time.

Self-Bossing

If you have the drive, initiative, and discipline to work from home, then you no doubt have what it takes to be your own boss. No more micro-managing, arrogant, non-communicating, lazy, favorite playing, under-appreciating, overworking, overbearing, incompetent, and “You-Fill-In-The-Blank” bosses. Of course, not every boss is bad. I have had some amazing bosses who are both friends and mentors. But this is no guarantee. Officevibe created a pretty telling infographic that suggests some most problematic characteristics of bad bosses include controlling, dedecisive, stubborn, resistant to change, leading by fear, micromanaging, favoritism, visionless, arrogant, angry, emotional, and blame throwing. Just about anyone in the workworld have experienced at least a few of these boss issues.

To a large extent, home-office-workers can pick their own schedule, their own projects, their own work habits, their own work styles, and their own daily work environment. They can boss themselves. For talented workers, this is a big plus. If you aren’t that talented yet, well personal development is in your control!

Why work from home? In short, there are as many different reasons as workers; however, many successful work-at-homers state that they are saving money and time, love not having to commute in traffic to the office, have become more productive, and boss themselves.

What Do You Think? What are other motivators for those of you who are thinking about or already working from home? Why work from home? We would love to hear your thoughts.

Trading Commute Time to Work for YOU Time

Most professionals who work in a larger metro area spend several minutes, if not an hour or more, in commute time to and from work. The more days you work at home, the fewer hours you spend commuting. Not only will you save the extra cash required for gas and car maintenance or public transportation and parking, you will save the wear and tear on your health and pocketbook. The country and business world saves collectively as well.

Health Savings by NOT Commuting to Work

According to Princeton Professors Daniel Kahneman (Winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics) and Alan Krueger in their paper: “Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being”, the commute, particularly the morning commute was an activity that elicited bad mood emotions such as anger, frustration, annoyance, depression, hassle, worry, and criticism. Thomas Christian of Georgia State University found that the more time we spend commuting, the less time we spend exercising, fixing our own meals, having people over, grocery shopping – basically doing things that lead to pretty significant health problems. Other studies have suggested that commuters are more likely to experience many physical health problems:

Neck and back problems
Obesity
Body aches
Sleep problems
A disappearing social life
Less time with the family

Basically, work-at-homers tend to trade drive for personal time – or family time or exercise time or kid time or social time – whatever gets moved to the top of your priority list. Even time for an extra hour or so for work is better than sitting in a car, bus, train…

Gas Savings by NOT Commuting to Work

Also, data from GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com (2013) suggests that in addition to the health benefits of NOT commuting, if the estimated 64 million workers of the 120-million person workforce who are not self-employed and who had compatible jobs for working at home plus the desire to do so would actually work from their home office, consumers as a whole would save $20 billion a year in gas alone.

National Savings by Commuting to Work

If that same population of the estimated 64 million workers who could work from home did, as a nation, we would:

Reduce greenhouse gases by 54 million tons a year
Reduce wear on our highways by over 119 billion miles a year
Save 90,000 people from traffic-related injury or death each year
Save over 640 million barrels of oil each year

Business Savings by NOT Commuting to Work

For that same population, if the appropriate workers did NOT commute to work each day, businesses collectively would:

Save over $500 billion a year in total costs
Increase national productivity by 5 million man-years or $270 billion worth of work
Save on numerous overhead expenses related to office space, utilities, parking, and wasted time at work

Personal Savings by NOT Commuting to Work

On an individual and personal basis, let’s say that you spend one hour in your car in your commute time to work five days each week (30 minutes to work and 30 minutes home.) That is five hours a week NOT doing something else. Multiply 5 times 49 weeks each year (assuming you get three weeks of vacation) and you get 245 hours in the car. Let’s assume you work a 50-hour work week. NOT commuting saves you almost five work-weeks each year. What could you do in five weeks a year of extra leisure, family, exercise, thinking, or work time? Even working from home just one day each week could save you a week a year of work hours. In the big picture, this is a lot of time.

Bottom Line: Working from home, especially the no commute part, has a ton of benefits. The key? Make sure that 1) your business works for you at home, 2) you have developed the skills, discipline, and home office environment so that it works well, and 3) you have thought through the downside of working from home thoroughly (Yes, there are some downsides) and are either OK with them or have found a way over them.

What do you think? How much time do you spend commuting? If you could work a day a week at home, would it be worth it? What are the obstacles? What might be the advantages? We would love to hear your story.

About Home Office Insights

Welcome to Home Office Insights! I am glad you clicked in for a visit. This site is dedicated to all the professionals who are working out of their home office – those just beginning and those seasoned professionals who have figured out how to be productive, efficient, and highly satisfied. It isn’t easy. Each of us has our own particular challenges. Some of us need to focus on work habits. Others may need to focus on setting up a productive and efficient office space that we LOVE to be in for hours at a time. Still others may need to learn about technology that can make our lives easier. Some may just need some encouragement and inspiration. If you fit one or more of these groups, then you are in the right place.

A Little Back Story

Many years ago, I read one chapter of a very old book, called Wishcraft by Barbara Sher. I think it was published in the late 1970’s and I think I read part of it when I was in college. It offered a step-by-step strategy for making your dreams come true. I don’t remember much about the steps except for this: Write down your ideal day in detail. Describe how you see yourself in your perfect, ideal day. The point was that you can’t really get to a dream unless you know in detail what that dream looks like. I remember doing this exercise. It went something like this:

“I wake up in my cabin in the woods, fix a great cup of coffee, greet my greyhound rescue dog, and move to the deck where I greet the brisk Colorado morning and again stand in awe of my breathtaking mountain view. I finish the first cup, put on my running shoes, grab the leash, and head out for my five mile run. When I return, I sit down at my computer (with a mountain view) and begin my day’s writing. My “job” is working for myself, writing books and newsletters, teaching in a small college a couple of days a week, and traveling around the country speaking on something interesting. I don’t go into an office. I only go into town twice a week. I only travel when I want to and it is worth the speaking fee…..”

The detailed description of my ideal day went on for many paragraphs. The point is that I knew from college that eventually, I wanted to work from home with a Colorado mountain view and have the freedom to do what I wanted. I wanted to write and teach and travel – but on my terms – not someone else’s.

After four years of undergrad, graduate school, a PhD, a career as a college professor and Dean of Students, a career as a curriculum manager, starting a few businesses, and finally an educational consultant and freelance writer, I am sitting here in Colorado with a mountain view. I have a cabin in the mountains AND a home in Denver. My greyhound eventually went to doggy heaven, but I now have an Italian greyhound at my feet. I have aged some (well, a lot) and my four-mile run has been reduced to daily one mile or so run or a long dog walk. I did the travel thing for a while until it lost its luster. For the last 12 years, I have worked in my home office on projects that connect with my passions. The point? I don’t think I would have gotten here if I hadn’t actually described my ideal day in the beginning. It was a long and windy path, but here I am – mostly living that ideal day. I definitely revised it every few years, but the basic day has stuck in my head. I just change some of the details. Technology came along and has made it much easier. Working from home is as productive for me (if not way more productive) than in any office.

I highly recommend that you take a few minutes and write down your own ideal day (not what you think might happen or could happen based on where you are now, but a “no rules – no box” ideal day. As the Wishcraft book said – You can’t achieve something if you don’t know what that something is in detail.

I’ve Learned a Lot!

In my journey to this version of my ideal day, I have learned a lot! I have learned that to be productive at home, I needed to change some of my attitudes, develop some discipline, and change some aspects of my non-working life. I needed to learn more about how to be organized, how to stay up on things, and how to stay connected. I needed to learn some technology skills and how to make technology work for me. Working from home full time certainly hasn’t been easy or intuitive; however, it has been well worth the effort, extra learning and skill development, and initiatal pain. As of now, I don’t see how I could ever go back to the traditional office environment. I am constantly improving my work-at-home knowledge and skills, but what I am doing now works pretty well. I make the same money as I did in the office, have the same connections, and see the same bright professional future.

I talk to people all the time who are thinking about working from home either a day or two a week or even full time. I hear their fears of things like losing face-time and connections with colleagues, not having the discipline, being distracted by home stuff and kids, missing out on promotions, not being able to manage the technology, and so many more. I also hear a lot of complaints about the commute time to the office, bad bosses, crazy co-workers, stuffy cubicals, pointless meetings, bad lighting, uncomfortable chairs, and on and on. So, maybe something you learn here at HomeOfficeInsights.com will help clear up some fears and myths and encourage you in making the move to your home office. Or, maybe some of the insights can help make your office job better and more productive. Keep reading!

My Mission with HomeOfficeInsights.com

The mission of HomeOfficeInsights.com is to share what I have learned about how to productively and efficiently work from home and to provide a vehicle for others to share their ideas as well. As I tell my college students, not every person learns (works) in the same way and what is meaningless for one person may be just the right tip for someone else. You just never know.

We’ll be discussing several areas that, when done well, lead to a highly successful work at home environment.

Habits: What are the habits needed to be productive and efficient? A lot of us are on our own billable time (and the rest are on someone else’s billable time), so getting the biggest bang for each hour worked is an important step. This section suggests lots of habits, techniques, strategies, thought processes, and so forth to help in the day-to-day working.
Design: What home office designs work – and what doesn’t work? Design is a personal thing, but perhaps you can gain some ideas to create that home office sanctuary we all dream about. This section talks about home office design and cool things that will make getting up and going to work delightful!
Technology: What technology is available for a highly productive home office? I’m a bit lazy, so love the technology that makes my life easier and more efficient. The technology that helps me make money is nice too.
Inspiration: Well we all need a bit of inspiration every now and then. This section provides just that. Visit here often to get a bit of a pep talk or food for thought.
Reviews: With the help of our readers, we will take a look at what works, what doesn’t work, and what is the best of breed in many different home office-related areas.

Thanks again for visiting. There is a little something for everyone, so come back often and share your own home office insights.

If you ever need a hand or have ay questions, feel free to leave them below and I will be more than happy to help you out.

All the best,

Terry Taylor
terry@HomeOfficeInsights.com