I’m mother and a business woman. I’m a wife. I’m a USA Today bestselling author of 56 books with over six million copies sold. I’m currently on tour, cyber and physical, with my husband, Tim, with our new book, It Happened On Maple Street. It’s our true life love story that shows first hand the healing power of love.
And I am most definitely home based. I’ve been working from home for more than nineteen years. And I’ve learned a lot. Probably more than I realize. I have found a way to run a successful career with only a home based office. Today I want to share with you four of the things that have worked for me.
1. Get a Fed-Ex account! It’s free to open the account and it opens the world to you – brings the world to your doorstep. You need to get something to someone by tomorrow? Just pick up the phone and leave your package outside your front door. They do the rest. They’ll even drop off packaging boxes, envelopes and labels, which are free of charge. They do further out runs, too. You don’t have to use the overnight service. I just tend to be in overnight necessary situations a good bit of the time.
2. Set hours for yourself and stick to them. I found this one to be vitally important. Home contains life. And life contains all kinds of important things to do. They will call to you, distract you, drag you away unless you pencil yourself out from them to go to work and then go to work when you pencil yourself out. Being able to work my own hours is a benefit of working at home. Being able to be flexible is a huge benefit. But like anything else in life, too much of a good thing can turn really bad. Flexibility and the ability to walk away if the phone rings can end up robbing you of every hour in the day and then no work gets done. Tim (my husband, the love of my life and co-author of our new release, It Happened On Maple Street) and I worked out a plan that works for us. When he leaves the house for work everyday (he’s an engineer) I got to the office in our home. I work while he works. I leave the office to change loads of laundry. Or to answer the door. If one of our kids needs something (they’re all grown) I schedule myself out, but otherwise I work while he is at work. This was practical for us because when he isn’t at work, I want to be with him! And when I have to schedule myself out during the day, I make up those hours in the evening. That’s when Tim gets his time in our office taking care of his part of our writing responsibilities.
3. Set Your Boundaries. This is a make you or break you thing. In our society, a woman at home is free game. She’s there to nurture, to call, to lean on, to borrow from, to ask assistance from, to call on, to visit. She’s there to cook and to clean and take the dogs to the vet. To fix skinned knees and find the lost cat and run for gas when the neighbors car runs out. She always there. And the people in her life know that. It’s just a fact. You need something, she’s there. And most women that I know cannot ignore the call when it comes. A child, a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a spouse needs something and it is woman’s internal drive to be there. To tend to that need. I want to be there, to be needed, to tend to those who need me. And I have to write four books a year. I have to do book signings and blog tours and interviews. I have to write articles and answer questions and get through hundreds of emails. I have to schedule and be on Facebook and tweet and judge contests. I have to find at least eight hours in a day to work. It’s just a fact. I bring income to this family and that isn’t going to happen if I don’t work. Now…when I say set your boundaries, I don’t mean (yet) that you set them for other people. You have to set them for yourself. You have to determine, in your mind and heart, who you are and what you are going to accomplish. You have to know that if you have to work eight hours a day, you are going to have to say no to some requests. You have to determine your priorities and know which requests are automatic yes’ and then learn to say no to the rest. And once you’ve done that, you have to make those boundaries clear to those in your life. If you don’t know your boundaries you can’t teach them. And if you don’t teach others what your boundaries are, they can’t possibly respect them. When I was raising my daughter she knew what hours were fully hers and which ones were mine. Unless the house was on fire or she was bleeding I didn’t come out of the story during my work time. I set her up with a desk in my office, her own computer, so we could be close, but she understood that when I was working I was off limits. She was a smart girl though. It didn’t take her long to figure out that if she asked for permission to do something while I was in the story, I’d usually just mumble a yes, without ever hearing the question. That lasted until she asked to do something that would have been a ‘no’ at any other time. After that we set new boundaries. She wasn’t allowed to ask until I was done working when she wanted permission to do something.
4. Create Your Space. Set aside space in your home as your work space. Have this be your ‘office’ whether it’s a corner of a room or a separate room. And then keep yourself out of your office when you aren’t on your business hours. Because just as your life will take over your work time, suffocate it to the point of not getting any work done, working from home can have the opposite effect as well. The work will suffocate your ‘life’ time if you let it. I love what I do and the creative muse is very kind to me and it wasn’t difficult for it to talk me into sticking around with it for longer and longer periods of time. I got to the point that I was working until two or three in the morning. My life suffered. And so I learned to separate my work time from my home time. To do that I had to separate my work space from my home space. If I was in the dining room where my computer lived, or walking through the dining room, the computer called out to me. I’d gravitate toward it, only for a minute. A minute that turned into hours. So I separated work space from home space. And I enter work space only when I intend to work. I found that family members then also associate me differently when I am in my work space. I’m at work when I’m there. They don’t bother me unless they have to. And when I’m not in the office, I’m available to them. They can count on that. It made them much less resentful of my time spent at work. I also found that the separation between work space and home space made it easier for me to get right at the work during work time. Like a Pavlovian dog, I know that when I’m in the office, it’s time to work. And its easier to relax on my off work time now, too. I know that when I’m not in the office, I’m not at work. My home life is really home life again.
This post is brought to you as part of the It Happened On Maple Street International Blog Tour. For a complete tour schedule visit www.tarataylorquinn.com. All blog commenters are added to the weekly basket list. Gift Basket given each week to one randomly drawn name on the list.
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, or if you suspect someone is, please contact www.thehotline.org, or call, toll free, 24/7, 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY). The call can be anonymous and is always confidential. There is not one second of life that is worth wasting.
Next tour stop, Tuesday May 3, Chapter’s Books: http://community.indigo.ca//find/community-posts/1.html.
To get your copy of It Happened On Maple Street, visit your favorite bookseller, or www.maplestreetbook.com.
Don’t miss The Chapman Files! Still available at: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Tara+Taylor+Quinn.
It Happened On Maple Street is available on Kindle and Nook, too! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0757315682/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d2_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SKJ9D86BB5XG2BPT4MV&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846; http://search.barnesandnoble.com/It-Happened-on-Maple-Street/Tara-Taylor-Quinn/e/9780757315688/?itm=15&USRI=tara+taylor+quinn.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Good Morning! Another interesting post, Tara. I think items 2 and 3 can be applicable to many of us, even if we don’t work at home. I’m retired now, but I remember bringing work home on many occasions – when I should have been paying attention to more important things! Thanks for sharing!
PS – Still not available on B&N …
You made some excellent points in today’s blog that will benefit any one who reads it. I’m glad you found a way to separate your writing time from your family time. While I never had a family of my own ie a husband or children…..I did have to set up a room for when I was working on composing lesson plans and/or grading papers or whatever else I had to do for school or I would find myself trying to watch TV at the same time I was supposed to be working on school stuff.
I’m not a writer but you have given me food for thought. I like how you have managed to organize your life and by doing so get an awesome amount accomplished. i used to be a well organized person but I find myself extremely disorganized now. Maybe I just need to regroup and get organized again.
Excellent ideas! I worked from home for 5 years before my current job and you are so right in that your “flexible” time can disappear so quickly if not protected. These are great suggestions, even if just trying to get a handle on hours at home in general!
Thanks for bringing us to this site! I enjoyed looking around while visiting here!
Karen, Ellen, Kaelee and Lynda,
I feel disorganized much of the time lately as I look around me at the important things waiting to be done, but I think, at the same time, that much of what I wrote (and much more that I didn’t have room for) has become so ingrained that it’s habit for more, more than being organized. Kind of like I breathe. I do the rest of it. And I think part of why it works is because I believe it will. I know what’s most important to me and I keep my mind on those things. I run every single decision I make through the eyes of what is most important.
Thanks for the comments. I loved this site, too and figured others would. Kelly has her finger on the pulse of women…