Ian,
Good topic to introduce. It is a tricky balance to establish and
maintain.
I've worked out of a home office for 14 years as a writer-producer. Until
this past year, I had a wife who took it upon herself to make sure that I
maintained a balance between working and playing. I was in the office by
6 am, and was left undisturbed except for emergencies until 6 pm. After 6
pm it took a major exception for me to go back to the "office" that day.
Basically this worked fine for us and for most of my clients. During my
work day I did everything that I needed to do related to my profession;
including reading, handling the mail (including email), watching videos,
and doing personal projects--as long as it related to my work as a
writer-producer. After hours I did other things.
Now that I'm living by myself and working more in cyberspace, that balance
has changed some. I'm still in the office early every day, but now I'll
take some afternoon time off, work a little more and then take the evening
off. Transmission speeds get real slow during the evening time so it's a
good time to go be social. Then I'll come back for a late night session,
before actually calling it a day.
The two most difficult things I have found about maintaining the
home/office balance for an at home office is (a) not letting the
convenience of being at home interupt the flow of your work day. Doing
laundry is one thing, you can do it while you are on the phone, but baking
cookies for school or mowing the lawn are something else--that's taking
time off from work. And (b) educating your friends that you really do
have a job and that you really are at work during your work hours; you
just happen to reside and work in the same building.
Chris
A. Christopher Hammon, Director
Center for Sleep and Stress on the Web
http://www.quantadynamics.com/
--"A. Christopher Hammon" <quanta@ntr.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>