Following on from Charlie Clown's Topic

Snookie · August 19, 2012

I guess there are quite a lot of self-employed people who post here. I've worked for myself for a large part of my life and have always had difficulty drawing the line between work and not-work. While I've got better recently I can still find it hard to separate the two. I'm wondering how other people do this, and more generally, how people introduce variation/breaks into the working day when they work from home/on their own.

I generally start working when my better half leaves for work and take a long break (90 mins+) during the day to go out for lunch/a long walk and listen to podcasts. This equates to the time that would otherwise be spent getting to/from work and its one of the attractions of working from home but the lack of clear division between where you live and work has lots of disadvantages. I've find myself sitting down at my desk at 6.30am in the morning and not getting up until 7pm far too often. I no longer bring my laptop in to the bedroom at night but I still check my work mail if I wake up during the night (I live in Asia but work with clients from here and Europe) mostly because I feel I should be available when they are working. Few if any of them think the same but still...

I'm trying to change the types of work I take on. I've worked with a mixture of corporate and non-profit clients over the last 7 or 8 years. The former has traditionally subsidised the latter and allowed me take on work I would otherwise not be able to do. I'm happy with doing this, even if the balance is not right. I tend not to treat work with non-profits as a commercial activity and end up significantly undercharging or not charging for work that I do.

This place serves as a 'social distraction' from work. I usually log in when I start working and leave a window open while I'm at my desk. In general, there are plenty of smart, funny and generous spirited people posting here.

Lunch over. Back to work....

Kahnee · August 19, 2012

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