Work From Home Tips

Life coaching is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling careers that there is. It is also one that allows for great flexibility.

Set up costs are very low by average business standards. There is no need to manage a workforce with all the stress that goes with that. There is no stock to concern yourself with and you can pretty much get to choose the type of people you want to coach and the hours that you will make yourself available.

The advent of websites, social media and modern communication technology means that you can market your services nationally and even internationally, constrained only by the difference in time between you and your clients.

Perhaps the best of all, though is that you have no need for swanky, expensive premises with their associated overheads. You can easily work from home if you have space for a suitable home office.

[box type=\”shadow\”]“Home is where I work. And I work everywhere.”

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Work From Home Tips (Continued)

 

Many benefits

Working from home has a great many benefits.

Unless you are meeting clients face-to-face you have no need to dress up. You simply need to take a leaf from the book of TV anchors and ensure you look respectable from the waist up! There’s no need to join the daily commuter rat race and waste valuable hours of your life in traffic.

Within reason, you can work as many or as few hours a day as you wish, as and when you wish without worrying about what your boss may think if you’re not in the office. You are your own boss and can take breaks as and when it suits you. There are even tax breaks that come from using part of your home as your office.

Some downsides

But, like everything in life, there can be downsides to working from home.

Unless your office is relatively separate or insulated from the rest of your home, you may suffer from interruptions from the family and be distracted by noisy animals. You may also feel somewhat alone and/or isolated being away from the general hustle and bustle of the corporate office environment. And you need to take responsibility for your own continued professional development.

However, on balance, most people relish working from home especially if they understand and take care to manage the possible downsides.

Ten useful tips

Here are ten useful tips for ensuring that working from home delivers the sense of freedom, flexibility and enjoyment that it has the potential to do.

Keep your workspace separate from your living space.

Ideally, your office space should be visually and acoustically separate. Make it feel like a different world when you step into it. This will help you separate your working life from your home or family life, even though the two environments may be physically separated just by a door.

Get a dedicated phone line, computer and printer.

This is an obvious extension of the first tip. Your office space won’t feel special and distinct if you have members of the family rushing in and out to print things, make phone calls or borrow your computer to look something up on the Internet!

Set clear boundaries

Friends, family and neighbours should appreciate that your office is off limits. Even though you are at home every day, you are working. Have a no interruption policy during working hours.

Take regular breaks during your day

You’ll have more time seeing that you’re not commuting, and the temptation may be to spend that extra time in your office working when you’d be better off using that time for physical exercise, meditation or some form of re-energisation. It’s a known fact that \’work-from-homers\’ tend to spend more hours at their desks actually working than their corporate counterparts!

Set goals, targets and maintain to do lists

That all comes with the turf in the corporate environment but when you work from home being goal-oriented and regularly taking time to assess your progress against your goals, requires you to be disciplined.

Request frequent feedback from your clients, suppliers and joint venture partners

Keep your eye on the ball by ensuring that you get regular feedback form all those who you work with.

Add variety to your day

Working from home can be thoroughly enjoyable but only if you take steps to ensure you don’t get into a predictable and boring routine. Take regular time out of the home office to meet clients and/or other people, get some exercise or enjoy a cup of tea or coffee at your favourite local cafe. Indulge in the occasional lunch away from home or allocate an hour to read a great book.

Form a support group for motivation

If you’re a coach, form a network with other coaches who are in a similar situation. Alternatively, form a local community of professionals who work from home and who can support and motivate each other. Arrange regular meetings. They don’t have to be face-to-face if you are not located in the same area. Run teleconferences or group calls on Skype.

Showcase the pride you have in your business

When you work from home and your business model is such that you don’t meet with clients on your home premises, it is easy to let your standards slip and allow your office to become a messy dumping ground. After all, nobody will see it, right? Well, you\’ll see it everyday and subconsciously you will associate your business with the environment within which you operate it. So do yourself a favour and keep your office in the condition you would like it to be if you had to host clients in it. Read up on Feng Shui and apply it in your workspace, no matter how small it may be.

De-clutter periodically

This sounds simple but it’s often hard to do when you work from home. It’s too easy to allow your business life and all the paperwork, files, books and electronic gizmos that form part of it to accumulate and overflow into your living space, so that the boundary between living and working becomes less and less distinct! Schedule time every three months to do some serious de-cluttering.

 

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This is the official Blog for New Insights Life Coach Training.
Find out more about life coaching and becoming a life coach here:

SA/Africa: http://www.life-coach-training-sa.com


UK/Europe: http://www.life-coach-training-uk.com

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