The Freelance Work-Life Balance
Working from home can be tough on relationships. Regardless of the problems working at home may spark, here are some ideas to help keep your home office from having a negative impact on your relationships at home.
Although it may be the same physical space, setting up a schedule, laying out some ground rules, and developing a mutual understanding with your significant other, family, and/or co-habitant(s) can help make switching gears from personal time to work time less emotional and more effective.
Communication and Expectations
Set realistic expectations with your family, roommate(s), etc, let them know your schedule, and provide them with clear signals as to when not to disturb you. For example, my wife and I both work form home, and we both have offices, and we both shut our doors when we do not want to be disturbed. If we really need to, we knock, it gives each of us a little bit of mental space to stop doing what we are doing and switch our attentions. We both know when we’ll be working, and we both know what to expect.
Your Office
If you are lucky enough to have a spare room in your home dedicated to the purpose of being a home office, make the most of it. If shutting the door is too isolated, consider getting something as simple as a red flag or scrap of ribbon that signals everyone in your home that you are working. Explain what the flag means and what you expect when it is up.
If you absolutely cannot work form home consider renting an inexpensive office space. Check out the Office Business Center Industry’s website for a searchable database of shared and temporary office spaces. For shorter home invasions (relatives from out of town around the holidays) take your laptop down to the coffee shop for a breather. If you’ve communicated your schedule to your family, they’ll understand your hiatus.
Schedule Your Time
If you can schedule your time consistently, then your household will know when to expect you’ll be working. If your red flag is always up, or your door is always shut, then you may need to schedule your time away from work. Consider scheduling a date with your significant other. Sometimes work is so crazy that it’s the only way to give your full attention. Furthermore consider making it a regular appointment on your calendar, same goes with your children, friends, or any other important people in your life. Consider using a service like Remember the Milk , a great tool to help prioritize your to-do list and calendar. It also provides reminders on any or all of your devices. If you can make the time, schedule it, and keep the date, everyone will be more understanding when it comes time to work.
The freelance lifestyle is an ongoing mix of challenges and rewards. Balancing the two sides of the equation can help keep your freelance work from invading your personal life, and make for a happier work from home experience all around!
- Alex
I settled with renting office space.
Daily commuting (in my case half an hour jog through a forest) allows me to switch mental contexts. I mean I clear my mind of all things related to work before I arrive at home all in sweat (-:
And I noticed that my family finally considers my work to be “proper job” (although I’m still doing effectively the same: programming in Ruby on Rails for clients in U.S. and Western Europe)
Good article that, it’s something that many ‘work from home’ jobs tell you nothing about. At first it seems an idyllic picture, you get up later, you dont have the stress of public transport, you schedule your own time yada yada….
I myself have noticed however that you tend to work longer hours, you can’t put the work down, you become divorced from the rest of your family’s reality and at worst you lose track of your own sense of self and purpose.
The idea that you can turn it into another ‘job’ and seperate it specifically seems a great idea
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Very good site, brilliant write up.
Maybe one or two thumbnails can be added.
I think it should be promoted to front page.
While at it, may I ask how you setup your review system?
Thank you.
IT provider
A bit issue also is for single people working at home can be very isolating. In fact I would say that’s probably the biggest problem with working from home, that you can get isolated if you are are not otherwise a very social person. For a person with a husband/wife and kids, not as much of an issue, although in this case the distractions can be more of an issue.
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