Wii vs. Work: The Challenges of Working from Home

You're sitting at your computer, working from home, as usual. It's two o'clock in the afternoon and you're starting to feel that after-lunch exhaustion. You know you have to finish writing some memos but then you look up from your desk: your 32 inch television screen is staring at you, begging for you to take a small break. You open your desk drawer, looking for a pen to begin writing your memos, and then you see it: a Wii remote. "I suppose I could take just a few minutes and relax with a little Wii Tennis", you think to yourself. A few minutes eventually turns into a few hours, and before you know it, it's dinnertime and the memos suddenly get moved to tomorrow's "To Do" list.

This is just one of the many challenges of working from home. Unfortunately, there are numerous other challenges that many business owners face when working under their own roofs.

Distractions
The first challenge is the distraction that many business owners experience while working from home. There are hundreds of temptations lying around every household: TVs, Facebook, chores, children, dogs, video games, food and couches are usually within about thirty seconds of the standard home office. Working from home is not for everyone. Below is a graph that shows the amount of personal work that is done from home during a typical work day in comparison to a typical work day in an office.

Overcoming distractions is all about discipline. If you set daily and weekly goals and strive to work towards these goals each day, you have a greater chance of being successful when working from home. Be sure to be honest about what you have and have not achieved—and keep in mind that people fall behind from the office as well as from home, so do not get discouraged. Sometimes, keeping a journal of your productivity or making check-lists helps a business owner stay on top of things when working from home.

Employees
In a thriving business, more and more employees will be hired. In an at-home business, this can pose some problems. The first challenge is that you must fully trust each of the employees that you hire, since they will be walking around your house. Be sure that each employee is properly screened during the interview process. During employee interviews, ask if the potential worker will be productive working from a home instead of from an office. Finally, make sure that you have space for your employees to work. Designate a room or desk at which the employee can work every day, consistently.

The second section of this challenge deals with the fact that you may not have employees working in your home. If you do not hire any people to work with you from home, you are completely on your own. Isolation causes less support, less camaraderie, less professional ideas, and less diversity. In addition, if a computer crashes, you're on your own! To prevent business isolation, schedule regular business lunches, or talk to other people who work from their own homes.

Storage
What starts out as a small inconvenience can easily build into the next work-from-home challenge: storage. When working from home, you do not only need a designated place of work, but you also need a place for storage and organization. Most stay-at-home workers tend to use their garages as their storage rooms. The problem with this is that it may turn cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and sometimes, this is not good for vital information. Others use basement rooms for their storage, however, going up and down the stairs may become a hassle. When choosing where your storage room will be located, be wise.

Technology
Got a technological question? Are the phones down? Can't figure out how to install a new software program? In an office building, these situations would be easy to fix; call the maintenance man, bother your neighbor, or talk to IT. From home, these questions pose our fifth work-from-home challenge. When deciding on new technologies, it is usually best to go with the more expensive systems. In fact, ninety percent of most transactions in a home business go through the phone, so it is best to splurge on expensive technologies and software rather than cheap-out and regret it when issues arise.

Meetings
When working from home, staying on top of meetings can be quite a challenge, especially when you're not participating in "water cooler chat" as much as other employees in an office. Staying caught up on productive gossip that goes on around the office may be just as important as a formal meeting. Also, if you're looking to host a meeting yourself, but do not have the space to do it, remember that Panera Bread and Starbucks cafés are great spaces for business meetings and provide a stimulating ambiance. In addition to this, business incubators are another great place to hold meetings with your company or with other companies. They also provide a stimulating ambiance and many of the tools and services that a business may need to run an effective meeting.

Working from home is challenging. But, with the right mind-set and priorities, you may be an extremely effective entrepreneur from the comfort of your own home. But if you still aren't convinced, just take a look at the 34 million Americans who partake in home-based businesses today.