Telework is fashionable. More and more people, disgusted by congestion and want to enjoy life to the fullest, would like to start working from home. You, too, perhaps? What are the benefits of working from home? How to get started, or convince his employer? What operating adopt, and tools to use? How to stay motivated and not to sink into loneliness and isolation?
Myself home worker for many years, first as an employee and as an independent, I have created this guide where you will find the answers to your questions.
Why work from home
Why work from home? We all have different reasons. For my part, I started because I wanted to be in control of my schedule and my schedule. Others will do to avoid traffic or transport time. In fact, good reasons abound to want to work from home.
Control their schedules and schedule
Spend less time in transport
Avoid the stress of traffic or transit
Be independent in its organization
Enjoy the comfort of your home
Spend more time with your family / children
Avoid small heads and unpleasant colleagues
Able to work without being interrupted
pollute less
Able to work in different places or wacky
Avoid routine
Working with foreign companies
Do not be forced to move if relocation
Exciting, no? But beware, far from fantasy, working from home is not only advantages. Also hide behind the constraints and risks must be carefully evaluated before embarking on pain of disillusioned very quickly. I talk a little lower.
Myself home worker for many years, first as an employee and as an independent, I have created this guide where you will find the answers to your questions.
Why work from home
Why work from home? We all have different reasons. For my part, I started because I wanted to be in control of my schedule and my schedule. Others will do to avoid traffic or transport time. In fact, good reasons abound to want to work from home.
Control their schedules and schedule
Spend less time in transport
Avoid the stress of traffic or transit
Be independent in its organization
Enjoy the comfort of your home
Spend more time with your family / children
Avoid small heads and unpleasant colleagues
Able to work without being interrupted
pollute less
Able to work in different places or wacky
Avoid routine
Working with foreign companies
Do not be forced to move if relocation
Exciting, no? But beware, far from fantasy, working from home is not only advantages. Also hide behind the constraints and risks must be carefully evaluated before embarking on pain of disillusioned very quickly. I talk a little lower.
Is telecommuting for me?
The good news is that working from home is not reserved for a few exceptional cases. Although France is very behind in its adoption of telework, other countries have incorporated this practice much more important. In Finland and Belgium, for example, teleworkers rate exceeds 30%. Moreover, thanks to information technology, it has never been easier to make a remote work while remaining in contact with his team or managers.
Except for trades that necessarily require your physical presence, barriers to home work is mostly in your head. In fact, if you have a desk job, a profession of intellectual, or work behind a computer, you are a good candidate for remote work.
But even if you had the opportunity to work from home, is that you really should? Will you have the discipline to get up every morning? Can you avoid the trap of isolation? Can you keep your spirits without colleagues who take your coffee break? Are you able to be autonomous and organized? Can you master the computer tools to help you stay in touch with your clients or colleagues?
Again, I'm not saying this to discourage you. But for new home workers, see the difference between fantasy and reality is sometimes painful, and it is better to be prepared.
If you still think that telework is for you, congratulations. We will now see how we start.
Work at home, how to get started?
There are several ways to look for the one who wants to start working from home. The most radical method is to become independent. Many professionals do not bother to pay rent for an office and work from home with joy.
But you do not have to put yourself in your account to work from home. Employers are increasingly aware of telecommuting, and you may very well negotiate a telecommuting agreement with your managers.
In addition, work at home does not necessarily mean that you will not step foot in the company. If you start telecommuting as part of your current job, it is quite possible (and recommended) to start part-time. Why not start with a day on Wednesday or Friday? If the experiment is successful, you can extend it to a half, or even more depending on your needs and your constraints.
Attention must know that it is not because you are teleworker your status changes. Only your workplace is changed, you still have the same rights as other employees salary, vacation, training, working hours, etc.
There is also an intermediate solution, which is to work part-time, and create a busniess side, such as the auto-entrepreneur status. That said, start a busniess should not be undertaken lightly. If your only goal is to work from home, this solution is rejected.
Finally, beware of pickpockets employers will ask you to take even the auto-entrepreneur status and charge their salary. This is illegal, it is disguised wage labor, and is totally unfair to you. If your employer has the audacity to make you this proposal, laughing at his face and threaten to stick him on the buttocks labor inspection, this should calm him. In fact, call anyway labor inspection, as other colleagues who do not read Palsambleu, have perhaps have left before you.
Convince your employer to let you work remotely
You should know that France, telecommuting for employees is regulated. Here are some rules to be observed in the context of the implementation of your telework agreement:
You stay employee of the company
You have the same rights as other employees
You must receive an equivalent workload of other employees cele
Teleworking functions on a voluntary basis for both parties, which means that your employer can not force you to work remotely
With the possible reversibility for everyone, which means that you or your employer can decide to cancel your telework agreement at any time
Your employer must train you, and meet regularly
Your employer pays your busniess expenses
Now comes the hard part: convincing your employer. If this is sensitized to telework, this should be fine. But if it is from the old school, you have to negotiate fine to take your game well Expect three main objections from her.:
Fear of a decline in productivity
Fear of loss of control and management difficulties
Afraid of your isolation
Here are the good arguments to convince and reassure your employer.
1) Fear of declining productivity
Telecommuting, rights and obligations of the company and the employee
Many employers are afraid that their employees working from home are distracted or relax, and become less productive. Some things to put forward to counter this objection.
First, know that a study by the Environmental Medicine Institute (EMI) shows that work productivity decreases directly as soon as the stress increases. In other words, good stress does not exist. Feel free to highlight how you would be less stressed and therefore more productive by working at home.
Other research shows the amount of downtime we experience every day, and time to plunge into an activity then. At home, the number of interruptions will be much smaller, and productivity will suffer very greatly.
Explain that you have the time or work from home (illness, transport problems, etc.) you felt beacoup more productive and have shot a huge amount of work, and that you'd like to retry the experiment.
Finally, offer your employer to jointly define concrete measures to control productivity and to define a test period of two or three months during which you will be working from home one day a week. Obviously you take care during this famous period, to smash you at work so that the numbers are clear: at home, you really are more productive and efficient. Put a fait accompli, it will take your manager lot of bad faith to deny the extension of this experience.
2) Fear of losing control
Many managers are not very comfortable with management by objective and prefer to practice permanent control-face. Clearly, they do not dare leave their subordinates autonomy to achieve their goals they set, and prefer to assign them tasks piecemeal.
Submit your employer you set clear goals for each day you spend working at home. Explain that your workstation is configured to whether you're reachable at any time, and set again concrete measures to control productivity.
Show your manager the benefits that it will withdraw: instead of wasting hours to be on your back, you just assign it to a few goals and make sure they have been achieved. That time and gained efficiency.
Finally, emphasize that telework agreement may be terminated at any time on its decision, and therefore the risk is minimal.
3) Fear of your isolation
As we shall see, the isolation is one of the biggest risks for the home worker, and employers are aware general. There is every chance that your manager refuses your telecommuting agreement for fear that you disconnect from the company and your colleagues.
Again, offer an experience over a predetermined time, and explain by what means you will stay in touch with the company (see below). Also Emphasize that you want in any way to be present in the company at least one day a week to meet your colleagues firsthand and regularly take stock of your situation. I advise you to choose the Friday because Fridays are always cooler than the other days of the week.
Tools to use
Teleworking, how to make a living by staying home
It's go-be! You have decided to become a teleworker, and you've convinced your employer. We will now take a quick look at the tools you can use to keep in touch with colleagues and work out of the company. If you are not the first teleworker your busniess, chances are that remote working tools are in place, you just have to train yourself to use them. But if by yourself, little field, it is interesting to have a list of tools to get started.
Warning, new tools are born and die every day, and countless software available for all needs. Ask around, before you make your choice.
Work anywhere, just
Even if you can work from home from any old PC, I recommend you to use a laptop from the start. This will allow you to effectively work anywhere without having to reconfigure your workstation every time. On busniess, on the train or at the bar in front, you'll be glad you all your available tools.
Furthermore, most of the smartphones now offer Wi functionality routers, ie you can set your phone, accessing the network 3g, to act as a wireless modem and access the same web when no wi-fi n is accessible. Great, right?
Store, share and sync files
Dropbox is a simple and intuitive service that allows you to store your files on a remote server and synchronize seamlessly across different machines (including smartphones). You will also have the ability to share files with others, to work on common directories, or make public, accessible files through any browser. The service is free up to 2 GB of disk space. Dropbox also provides a dedicated service to busniesses, with a finer team management, enhanced security, greater control over the management of file shares, more disk space, etc.
Before using this service, but make sure you do not break your company's privacy policy.
Keep in touch
Of course, calling plans are much cheaper today, but nothing like a real video conferencing tool to not lose sight of your colleagues and managers, and remains available if needed. Many alternatives exist, but Skype is still the most widespread. With this tool, you will have the ability to chat or pass genuine calls, and even to have the video if you have a good webcam.
I also recommend you invest in a good headset, to receive a sufficient transmission quality.
Collaborate remotely
There are many tools that allow distributed teams to centrally manage a common project. One of the most recent, and provides very interesting features is Trello. Trello is a collaborative project management tool that can be assigned to assign tasks to different people, to indicate who is working on what, share files and calendars, manage deadlines. It is becoming very visual and intuitive, which greatly facilitates its adoption.
Emails, calendars, documents, etc.
Perhaps have you used to use Gmail to manage your mail, or Google docs to write documents. Did you know that you can use these tools on behalf of your company? Google indeed offers integration services so you can use its applications in a professional setting.
There are many other tools as needed, any list would be impossible. However, you'll find it with a search like "telecommuting tools" or "remote working tools".
Pitfalls to Avoid
As we said earlier, working from home is not without risk or constraints. If he is not careful, the new teleworker risk of falling into some traps that may well disgust which is nevertheless a tremendous opportunity. Here are some tips on the main problems you might encounter and how to avoid them.
How not to get distracted and stay productive
The entrepreneur for Dummies
When working at home, one of the risks is to yield to the many distractions around us and see productivity melt like snow in the sun. No one to watch you, you will need to discipline yourself to resist the temptations posed TV, music, books, video games, full fridge, sleeping dogs, etc.
If you have trouble staying focused, a great way to help you resist, it is difficult to make the temptation to satisfy. For example, unplug your gaming console, store it there in a box and bury there in the back of a closet. So you'll be less tempted to play "just 5 minutes." Idem, install a parental control software that blocks Facebook, Twitter or any other site where you used to hang out. Connect to it will become much more restrictive.
You can also use the Pomodoro technique. It involves the use of a timer to alternate periods of rest and working time.
Finally, you can force you to work less. If you leave many distracting and end your day at 18h, why not decide to work a maximum of eliminating distractions to finish at 15 or 16h? You will then have the time to practice all the leisure activities you want, but without the associated guilt.
How to stay motivated and succeed to get up every morning
Your office is a few meters from your bed Simply put on your slippers and take three steps to get you there slouch. No external constraint will force you to be at your workplace on time. Again, your only weapon against the loss of motivation and the temptation to sleep in, it is the self-discipline.
I recommend you to create a routine that will help you start your day on time. Getting up every day at the same time and follow the same ritual is not difficult when it is a habit.
Also be very firm with your work schedule. Decide on a time after which it is not possible that you start working. Take the opportunity to decide on a time after which you can not continue working.
Agree with your manager you have a video conference 5 minutes every day at 9:15 (for example) to define your tasks and Aims of the day. Thus, you will anyway have to get up (and dressed).
How to continue to distinguish between professional and personal life
When working at home, it is often difficult to distinguish between professional and personal life. Your office is never just a few steps, professionals mails arrive on your smartphone, including weekends. This is not a very healthy situation.
It is important that you get to make the distinction between family life and work, and each of these may interfere with each other. Start by clearly defining a physically limited work area in your home, which will be dedicated solely to this job. If you have the space, create a room for your work. Otherwise, install your office somewhere, and limit to your busniess.
Better also use two separate phone packages: one for the home phone, for the professional. The latter will be turned off at night and weekends, to prevent you consult constantly calls, sms and emails pros.
Also be very firm on your schedule start and end of work. Do not take characters calls during the day, and make it clear to those around you when you slog, you slog.
How to avoid parasites who imagine that you have plenty of free time
Around you, talk about precisely. Many people think that because you are at home, you are available. Some members of your entourage may have trouble understanding that it is not because you are at home you are not on leave, and will not see the harm in interrupt at any time for any what reason.
As I said, you can not let your personal life interfere with your work too. We must therefore make it clear to those who ask you that even if you are physically present, you are not available. You are at work. As you clearly set limits, and discuss them with those who would have difficulty understanding it.
How not to fall into isolation
Now we come to the main risk for homeworkers: isolation. Work from home sometimes means you will not see anyone all day. No colleague to talk to. Person to exchange the latest gossip or the latest joke toto. Person to ask a quick technical question or request information.
Some people live without any problems, and will find in this solitude an important driver of productivity. But for others, this isolation will be a great source of stress and can quickly turn into a nightmare. Here are some tips to overcome this problem.
First, remember that you are nomad. You do not have to work at home, you can also sit in a local café, library, or in any public place that offers a minimum of comfort. You can also find out about the existence of co-working spaces close to home. More numerous and popular, these structures offer a workplace to the card and shared for a fee that remains very affordable general.
You can also invite or move with friends, teleworkers themselves, to share a day of work in one or in the other. If loneliness weighs you, arrange at least to eat lunch with colleagues or acquaintances available.
Organize your manager regular video conferences to stay in touch with your colleagues and not be left out. Finally, if you are independent, do not neglect to expand your professional network: sign in conferences, follow training courses, participate in professional exchange evenings, join an association or union, etc. But above all, do not remain isolated.
Do not forget to chill out
My final recommendation to the new teleworkers will "remember to chill out." Millions of people would dream to be in your situation, you have the ability to access a comfortable life unthinkable for previous generations, and the possibilities are endless. Do not make the mistake of considering your luck as something banal. Here are some ideas to give you some inspiration, but your imagination is the only real limit.
You could work in extreme conditions: hike and take out your laptop when you reach the most amazing view. Take a picture and send it to your colleagues there for enrage.
Traveling, rent an apartment in Spain, Thailand, in the mountains or anywhere else, work during the day and visit the evening and weekends.
Work when you feel like it. Get up early to enjoy the peace and serenity of the early hours, when everyone is still asleep. Or sit in a crowded bar with a good pint in hand.
Fold your schedule to your desires. Spend on Wednesday with your children, and catch a late evening or weekend.
If you are single or living with a partner also mobile, visit your location, and sit on the other side of the world, living for a few dollars a day, and save big bucks a year, while living a disorderly life .
Or work like everyone else, schedules of everyone, and fully enjoy the joy to sip your own coffee and feel your feet your favorite slippers.
In short, you'll understand the possibilities of enjoying life are huge! Working at home, popular in many countries is still in its infancy in France. Do not let a few obstacles discourage you. You see, the game is really worth the effort.
The good news is that working from home is not reserved for a few exceptional cases. Although France is very behind in its adoption of telework, other countries have incorporated this practice much more important. In Finland and Belgium, for example, teleworkers rate exceeds 30%. Moreover, thanks to information technology, it has never been easier to make a remote work while remaining in contact with his team or managers.
Except for trades that necessarily require your physical presence, barriers to home work is mostly in your head. In fact, if you have a desk job, a profession of intellectual, or work behind a computer, you are a good candidate for remote work.
But even if you had the opportunity to work from home, is that you really should? Will you have the discipline to get up every morning? Can you avoid the trap of isolation? Can you keep your spirits without colleagues who take your coffee break? Are you able to be autonomous and organized? Can you master the computer tools to help you stay in touch with your clients or colleagues?
Again, I'm not saying this to discourage you. But for new home workers, see the difference between fantasy and reality is sometimes painful, and it is better to be prepared.
If you still think that telework is for you, congratulations. We will now see how we start.
Work at home, how to get started?
There are several ways to look for the one who wants to start working from home. The most radical method is to become independent. Many professionals do not bother to pay rent for an office and work from home with joy.
But you do not have to put yourself in your account to work from home. Employers are increasingly aware of telecommuting, and you may very well negotiate a telecommuting agreement with your managers.
In addition, work at home does not necessarily mean that you will not step foot in the company. If you start telecommuting as part of your current job, it is quite possible (and recommended) to start part-time. Why not start with a day on Wednesday or Friday? If the experiment is successful, you can extend it to a half, or even more depending on your needs and your constraints.
Attention must know that it is not because you are teleworker your status changes. Only your workplace is changed, you still have the same rights as other employees salary, vacation, training, working hours, etc.
There is also an intermediate solution, which is to work part-time, and create a busniess side, such as the auto-entrepreneur status. That said, start a busniess should not be undertaken lightly. If your only goal is to work from home, this solution is rejected.
Finally, beware of pickpockets employers will ask you to take even the auto-entrepreneur status and charge their salary. This is illegal, it is disguised wage labor, and is totally unfair to you. If your employer has the audacity to make you this proposal, laughing at his face and threaten to stick him on the buttocks labor inspection, this should calm him. In fact, call anyway labor inspection, as other colleagues who do not read Palsambleu, have perhaps have left before you.
Convince your employer to let you work remotely
You should know that France, telecommuting for employees is regulated. Here are some rules to be observed in the context of the implementation of your telework agreement:
You stay employee of the company
You have the same rights as other employees
You must receive an equivalent workload of other employees cele
Teleworking functions on a voluntary basis for both parties, which means that your employer can not force you to work remotely
With the possible reversibility for everyone, which means that you or your employer can decide to cancel your telework agreement at any time
Your employer must train you, and meet regularly
Your employer pays your busniess expenses
Now comes the hard part: convincing your employer. If this is sensitized to telework, this should be fine. But if it is from the old school, you have to negotiate fine to take your game well Expect three main objections from her.:
Fear of a decline in productivity
Fear of loss of control and management difficulties
Afraid of your isolation
Here are the good arguments to convince and reassure your employer.
1) Fear of declining productivity
Telecommuting, rights and obligations of the company and the employee
Many employers are afraid that their employees working from home are distracted or relax, and become less productive. Some things to put forward to counter this objection.
First, know that a study by the Environmental Medicine Institute (EMI) shows that work productivity decreases directly as soon as the stress increases. In other words, good stress does not exist. Feel free to highlight how you would be less stressed and therefore more productive by working at home.
Other research shows the amount of downtime we experience every day, and time to plunge into an activity then. At home, the number of interruptions will be much smaller, and productivity will suffer very greatly.
Explain that you have the time or work from home (illness, transport problems, etc.) you felt beacoup more productive and have shot a huge amount of work, and that you'd like to retry the experiment.
Finally, offer your employer to jointly define concrete measures to control productivity and to define a test period of two or three months during which you will be working from home one day a week. Obviously you take care during this famous period, to smash you at work so that the numbers are clear: at home, you really are more productive and efficient. Put a fait accompli, it will take your manager lot of bad faith to deny the extension of this experience.
2) Fear of losing control
Many managers are not very comfortable with management by objective and prefer to practice permanent control-face. Clearly, they do not dare leave their subordinates autonomy to achieve their goals they set, and prefer to assign them tasks piecemeal.
Submit your employer you set clear goals for each day you spend working at home. Explain that your workstation is configured to whether you're reachable at any time, and set again concrete measures to control productivity.
Show your manager the benefits that it will withdraw: instead of wasting hours to be on your back, you just assign it to a few goals and make sure they have been achieved. That time and gained efficiency.
Finally, emphasize that telework agreement may be terminated at any time on its decision, and therefore the risk is minimal.
3) Fear of your isolation
As we shall see, the isolation is one of the biggest risks for the home worker, and employers are aware general. There is every chance that your manager refuses your telecommuting agreement for fear that you disconnect from the company and your colleagues.
Again, offer an experience over a predetermined time, and explain by what means you will stay in touch with the company (see below). Also Emphasize that you want in any way to be present in the company at least one day a week to meet your colleagues firsthand and regularly take stock of your situation. I advise you to choose the Friday because Fridays are always cooler than the other days of the week.
Tools to use
Teleworking, how to make a living by staying home
It's go-be! You have decided to become a teleworker, and you've convinced your employer. We will now take a quick look at the tools you can use to keep in touch with colleagues and work out of the company. If you are not the first teleworker your busniess, chances are that remote working tools are in place, you just have to train yourself to use them. But if by yourself, little field, it is interesting to have a list of tools to get started.
Warning, new tools are born and die every day, and countless software available for all needs. Ask around, before you make your choice.
Work anywhere, just
Even if you can work from home from any old PC, I recommend you to use a laptop from the start. This will allow you to effectively work anywhere without having to reconfigure your workstation every time. On busniess, on the train or at the bar in front, you'll be glad you all your available tools.
Furthermore, most of the smartphones now offer Wi functionality routers, ie you can set your phone, accessing the network 3g, to act as a wireless modem and access the same web when no wi-fi n is accessible. Great, right?
Store, share and sync files
Dropbox is a simple and intuitive service that allows you to store your files on a remote server and synchronize seamlessly across different machines (including smartphones). You will also have the ability to share files with others, to work on common directories, or make public, accessible files through any browser. The service is free up to 2 GB of disk space. Dropbox also provides a dedicated service to busniesses, with a finer team management, enhanced security, greater control over the management of file shares, more disk space, etc.
Before using this service, but make sure you do not break your company's privacy policy.
Keep in touch
Of course, calling plans are much cheaper today, but nothing like a real video conferencing tool to not lose sight of your colleagues and managers, and remains available if needed. Many alternatives exist, but Skype is still the most widespread. With this tool, you will have the ability to chat or pass genuine calls, and even to have the video if you have a good webcam.
I also recommend you invest in a good headset, to receive a sufficient transmission quality.
Collaborate remotely
There are many tools that allow distributed teams to centrally manage a common project. One of the most recent, and provides very interesting features is Trello. Trello is a collaborative project management tool that can be assigned to assign tasks to different people, to indicate who is working on what, share files and calendars, manage deadlines. It is becoming very visual and intuitive, which greatly facilitates its adoption.
Emails, calendars, documents, etc.
Perhaps have you used to use Gmail to manage your mail, or Google docs to write documents. Did you know that you can use these tools on behalf of your company? Google indeed offers integration services so you can use its applications in a professional setting.
There are many other tools as needed, any list would be impossible. However, you'll find it with a search like "telecommuting tools" or "remote working tools".
Pitfalls to Avoid
As we said earlier, working from home is not without risk or constraints. If he is not careful, the new teleworker risk of falling into some traps that may well disgust which is nevertheless a tremendous opportunity. Here are some tips on the main problems you might encounter and how to avoid them.
How not to get distracted and stay productive
The entrepreneur for Dummies
When working at home, one of the risks is to yield to the many distractions around us and see productivity melt like snow in the sun. No one to watch you, you will need to discipline yourself to resist the temptations posed TV, music, books, video games, full fridge, sleeping dogs, etc.
If you have trouble staying focused, a great way to help you resist, it is difficult to make the temptation to satisfy. For example, unplug your gaming console, store it there in a box and bury there in the back of a closet. So you'll be less tempted to play "just 5 minutes." Idem, install a parental control software that blocks Facebook, Twitter or any other site where you used to hang out. Connect to it will become much more restrictive.
You can also use the Pomodoro technique. It involves the use of a timer to alternate periods of rest and working time.
Finally, you can force you to work less. If you leave many distracting and end your day at 18h, why not decide to work a maximum of eliminating distractions to finish at 15 or 16h? You will then have the time to practice all the leisure activities you want, but without the associated guilt.
How to stay motivated and succeed to get up every morning
Your office is a few meters from your bed Simply put on your slippers and take three steps to get you there slouch. No external constraint will force you to be at your workplace on time. Again, your only weapon against the loss of motivation and the temptation to sleep in, it is the self-discipline.
I recommend you to create a routine that will help you start your day on time. Getting up every day at the same time and follow the same ritual is not difficult when it is a habit.
Also be very firm with your work schedule. Decide on a time after which it is not possible that you start working. Take the opportunity to decide on a time after which you can not continue working.
Agree with your manager you have a video conference 5 minutes every day at 9:15 (for example) to define your tasks and Aims of the day. Thus, you will anyway have to get up (and dressed).
How to continue to distinguish between professional and personal life
When working at home, it is often difficult to distinguish between professional and personal life. Your office is never just a few steps, professionals mails arrive on your smartphone, including weekends. This is not a very healthy situation.
It is important that you get to make the distinction between family life and work, and each of these may interfere with each other. Start by clearly defining a physically limited work area in your home, which will be dedicated solely to this job. If you have the space, create a room for your work. Otherwise, install your office somewhere, and limit to your busniess.
Better also use two separate phone packages: one for the home phone, for the professional. The latter will be turned off at night and weekends, to prevent you consult constantly calls, sms and emails pros.
Also be very firm on your schedule start and end of work. Do not take characters calls during the day, and make it clear to those around you when you slog, you slog.
How to avoid parasites who imagine that you have plenty of free time
Around you, talk about precisely. Many people think that because you are at home, you are available. Some members of your entourage may have trouble understanding that it is not because you are at home you are not on leave, and will not see the harm in interrupt at any time for any what reason.
As I said, you can not let your personal life interfere with your work too. We must therefore make it clear to those who ask you that even if you are physically present, you are not available. You are at work. As you clearly set limits, and discuss them with those who would have difficulty understanding it.
How not to fall into isolation
Now we come to the main risk for homeworkers: isolation. Work from home sometimes means you will not see anyone all day. No colleague to talk to. Person to exchange the latest gossip or the latest joke toto. Person to ask a quick technical question or request information.
Some people live without any problems, and will find in this solitude an important driver of productivity. But for others, this isolation will be a great source of stress and can quickly turn into a nightmare. Here are some tips to overcome this problem.
First, remember that you are nomad. You do not have to work at home, you can also sit in a local café, library, or in any public place that offers a minimum of comfort. You can also find out about the existence of co-working spaces close to home. More numerous and popular, these structures offer a workplace to the card and shared for a fee that remains very affordable general.
You can also invite or move with friends, teleworkers themselves, to share a day of work in one or in the other. If loneliness weighs you, arrange at least to eat lunch with colleagues or acquaintances available.
Organize your manager regular video conferences to stay in touch with your colleagues and not be left out. Finally, if you are independent, do not neglect to expand your professional network: sign in conferences, follow training courses, participate in professional exchange evenings, join an association or union, etc. But above all, do not remain isolated.
Do not forget to chill out
My final recommendation to the new teleworkers will "remember to chill out." Millions of people would dream to be in your situation, you have the ability to access a comfortable life unthinkable for previous generations, and the possibilities are endless. Do not make the mistake of considering your luck as something banal. Here are some ideas to give you some inspiration, but your imagination is the only real limit.
You could work in extreme conditions: hike and take out your laptop when you reach the most amazing view. Take a picture and send it to your colleagues there for enrage.
Traveling, rent an apartment in Spain, Thailand, in the mountains or anywhere else, work during the day and visit the evening and weekends.
Work when you feel like it. Get up early to enjoy the peace and serenity of the early hours, when everyone is still asleep. Or sit in a crowded bar with a good pint in hand.
Fold your schedule to your desires. Spend on Wednesday with your children, and catch a late evening or weekend.
If you are single or living with a partner also mobile, visit your location, and sit on the other side of the world, living for a few dollars a day, and save big bucks a year, while living a disorderly life .
Or work like everyone else, schedules of everyone, and fully enjoy the joy to sip your own coffee and feel your feet your favorite slippers.
In short, you'll understand the possibilities of enjoying life are huge! Working at home, popular in many countries is still in its infancy in France. Do not let a few obstacles discourage you. You see, the game is really worth the effort.
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