Work From Home Misconception

Recently on my daily walk & talk with my best friend, a subject was mentioned that almost immediately pushed our buttons. Buttons we didn’t even realize we had!

Just what was this topic? All the “free time” that entrepreneurs that work from home have! You’ve probably run up against this as an author if you’re no longer working “a day job.”

• “Since I’m in the office all day, but my wife works from home, she can run that errand for me.”
• “My kid got sick and the school called, but that’s ok because my husband is an author; he can get my kid.”
• “I really want to have lunch/coffee with you. Since you are an entrepreneur, you have a more flexible schedule than my shift job.”

And the list goes on. I’m sure you’ve either heard exactly these statements or variations on them.

But wait. What makes that office, shift, or other job more important than the entrepreneur’s?

To be fair, I think a lot of office workers who have spent most of the last year and a half quarantined, working from home are suddenly realizing just how hard it is to be an author or entrepreneur or freelancer or any other job that allows you to work from home. Don’t get me wrong. Working from home has some great advantages:

• Set your own schedule
• No dress code
• Extra time with family
• Better food control (eat healthier for less $)

But it’s also got some disadvantages:

• Sometimes forced to work at unwanted hours
• No motivation to get dressed or even take a shower for days on end
• Too much time with family
• Lack of food control because you haven’t bought groceries yet

And that’s just four different dichotomies. There are dozens more. For every advantage, there’s a disadvantage.

But to me, the biggest has always been the perception that because I work from home…I have tons of free time.

I could (and sometimes have) fill up an entire day every week with errands, chores, business calls, and meetings that have NOTHING to do with my business.

“Let’s tick off all of the homeowner/spouse/parent/friend/community responsibilities tasks in one day! Yay! Oh, wait. It’s 2am and I haven’t done a single thing for my business today. I mean yesterday. And now I’m behind on at least half a dozen different projects…Rats.”

Sometimes it is my fault. I’m the one that got distracted. Or volunteered to do all of those things. Or I set up the account in the first place and now they won’t accept calls from my husband even though he’s clearly identified as an authorized user on the account (Thanks, Cox. Never working with you all again.)

But many times…it’s not. I either get volunteered or voluntold. Or there simply is no one else that can do that thing, and I’ve ignored it for too long.

Work-Life Balance is stinking hard when you work from home. And while we love the stories of people who write for an hour in the morning and then go hiking or scuba diving the rest of the day, it can sometimes feel like you’ll never reach that level of success when you’re down in the trenches, nose to the grindstone, being interrupted by a kid asking ridiculous questions every five seconds minutes.

And a lot of that frustration is one of the reasons I began thinking about, putting together, and then writing Weathering the Storm. It’s about planning ahead of time, recognizing when things are likely to go sideways, and then having a plan for when they do.

But that still leaves the hardest part of work from home up to us: Actually sitting down and working when we could be running to the grocery store ten times a day.

What is your biggest secret for protecting your work time and actually getting work at home done?