Help Family & Friends Understand You ARE Working!
Do you find yourself having to convince your family or friends that you are working from home and not just hanging around the house?
Is your use of Social Media platforms in your online business giving out the wrong impression to your family?
Working from home opens up a lot of freedom. In many instances you can set your own work hours, you can be more flexible with when to take breaks or time off, you are less likely to suffer work-related stress… or are you?
Working from home comes with its own unique set of problems. It’s really hard in the early days of freelancing, for your friends and family to recognise that it is a job and you are working.
You don’t leave for the office, you spend so much time on your phone/laptop, you are constantly on social media. Maybe your business is in its infancy and you don’t have a lot of income to back up your claims of working.
If you’re tired of the arduous attempts at making your family or friends recognise and value that you are working at home, then you need to implement some of these top tips.
Define the value of your work
Your spouse, partner, parent or friendly neighbour may not even realise that they are interrupting your workflow. If they see you at home, on your phone or even sitting down it may appear to them as an invitation for chit chat. Meanwhile, it breaks your concentration, infringes on your time and devalues the effort you are putting into your work.
Start by having a conversation with those closest to you about what exactly your work entails. Why are you on your phone? How is Social Media important for your business success? What exactly do you do for your clients and why it is important?
A simple but clear explanation of how you work will help them know that you are not as available as they first thought.
Involving your loved ones in setting your goals and celebrating work-related achievements will add substance and value to what may be a far stretched concept for them.
Set Clear Boundaries
As well as knowing exactly what you do in your work, your family also need to know what you need them to do.
Set very clear boundaries about your expectations of them and what they can expect from you. What days and times will you be available to them? Is your work flexible for interruptions? Having a routine in place where you take regular breaks around the same time will help enforce that you are working.
This is also true for you. It’s easy to get caught up with sneaking in some work time when you are supposed to be with family. Keep the connection time personal and they will more easily see and respect the difference between work time and free time.
Illustrate your Financial Gain
Often the worth of a project is defined by what you are gaining from it. If your family feel like they are losing out on time with you but are not yet gaining any financial benefit from your work, it can be difficult to get them on board.
Make a graphic illustration of your work earnings and pin it on the wall so that they can see what everyone is gaining. Is your income paying for football club, dance classes, that extra holiday week your spouse is taking off? Colour code it to make it clear for them.
Job Sheets and Client Tasks
Make a list of clients and the weekly tasks that must be completed for each of them. If confidentiality is an issue then you can give them colours, silly pictures or simply client numbers.
Pin it to the wall alongside your “Daily Tasks” board so that everyone, including you, knows exactly what needs to be done on any given day, in order to get paid.
Make a Schedule
So you already have a Daily Taskboard related to your work but is that enough for everyone to know how life and work can co-exist at home?
Make a schedule with your family showing when you are working, when household chores will be done, when you will be home but available to them, when extended family or friends are welcome to stop by.
You can include any categories that make it more structured and easy to follow. This is particularly helpful if you have kids at home so that they know when you will play or stop for lunch, when they can go out with you or when they need to entertain themselves.
As an added bonus, you could make it on a dry erase board so that you can change it on the fly. After all, working from home is supposed to be flexible.
No-Interruptions Code
Sometimes interruptions are just inevitable, especially if you have kids at home. You can set all the boundaries you want, but there need to be times when everyone knows it’s OK to break your flow.
Make a system that everyone understands as to when it is OK to come into your workspace. You could pin a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on your office door, or wear a set of headphones to indicate that you do not want to chat with anyone. This sends a very clear message that you are not available.
If the door is closed they cannot enter unless the house is on fire or there is a medical emergency.
The door half open means you are busy but don’t mind brief interruptions to resolve issues – does your spouse need the credit card out of your drawer?
The door fully open means you are taking a short break or you don’t mind the kids popping in to show you what they’re up to.
Come up with your own system that everyone understands.
Dedicated Workspaces
Sitting on your phone or laptop on the sofa isn’t convincing anyone that you are hard at work, regardless if it’s the truth. Let’s face it, it probably isn’t getting you into the most productive frame of mind, either.
Having a dedicated workspace is invaluable. If you can manage to section it off from the rest of the shared space, even better. It affords you some privacy and sends a clear message to everyone else that you are ‘at work’ rather than at home.
If you’re not able to have a private room dedicated to your work, it’s worth having a back-up option for days that just aren’t flowing how you need them to.
We all have a vision of our perfect environment but sometimes neighbours are renovating, noisily, visitors flock to your door, or indeed your own kids are having a particularly rough or loud day.
Life is chaotic and in these times it’s helpful to have a backup location that you can disappear to, to carry out your work with less distraction. The local library, coffee shop, co-working space or spare keys to a relative’s empty house are all considerations.
Have you implemented any of these strategies? Are they working for you or have you come up with your own innovative techniques?
However you have made it work, everyone in the family now appreciates that you’re working. They all value the time and effort that you’re putting in, and you’re all clear on the boundaries when you’re busy. Great job!
If you’re looking for some tips on how to manage your time as a freelancer, take a look at my post ‘Freelancer? How Do You Manage Your Time?’
Do you know any freelancing ninjas struggling to kick out the visitors and get their work done? Share this post with them and give them some stepping stones to success!
