There's a common phrase, "what happens at work stays at work, what happens at home stays at home". Not an easy thing to do, but especially for the one who's work is at home. These people have unique challenges to find balance of these two roles.
Many people work long hours in their jobs or home business and find they don't feel like they have much left over for their families after a long day. Yet, the families are the priority, how to give your best to both can be a struggle.
Strategy One: Use the drive home to focus on coming home.
This strategy is more geared for people who work outside of the house, it's important. However long your commute from work to home is, use that time to work through work issues somewhat and then focus on what you have to look forward to at home. Think about your loved ones and what their day might have been like.
Two: Come up with a Schedule
You might need to think outside of the box when you work from home. There's a tendency to put in more work hours when you work from home, simply because there's not clear boundaries of work hours. Maybe you can work after the kids have gone to bed, or early in the morning. But look at the schedule of your family and see if you can find times in their day when their needs are less and use that for work hours.
Strategy Three: Get Separate Phone lines
Fortunately for me, with my business I rarely have to be on the phone, almost all communication with clients is done via email. But if you are finding that you are getting business phone calls at all hours, having a separate number for them to call is great. You also have the option of making your cell phone your business phone and the home phone is personal. This way when your work day is done you can put the phone down and walk away from it. You can also separate the rings for people you know personally and business so you don't accidentally answer a business call after working hours.
Tip Four: Create a space that is separate from the house.
Do you have an extra room that could be used exclusively for this purpose? I know it's not always possible. Perhaps you could get inexpensive room partitions to create a work area. It's important that you try to make a space so that your roles can be separate and you can walk away from it when you need to. It also helps to keep family out of your work area as well.
About the Author:
Working from home creates mixed tensions between work and family life balance. Drop by our site to get suggestions about this for people who want a home business
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