Breaking the 9 Most Common Work-at-Home Myths
By: Sylvie Fortin
So, you want to work at home,
do you? You think it’s going to mean less hours, more
time with your family, and big income, right? To best answer
this question, let's get real about this whole "working
from home" thing. Let’s take a look at the Facts
versus the Myths of telecommuting:
Myth 1:
I will be able to spend more time with my family
Yes, you'll
be home more, but you will spend every spare moment working.
Your family will be eating the dinner that you cooked, but
you will be in your office, working, hoping they leave you
some crumbs that you can eat cold at your desk. You will
become that odd person that sits at the desk in the corner
that your family waves at while they go on with their lives.
Myth 2:
I'll work while the baby is sleeping.
Everyone else's
baby sleeps—yours won't.
Myth 3:
I won't have to spend money on childcare.
Spend a day
working with your toddler in your office, then decide whether
you need childcare or not. After a day of “work for
5 minutes, take the stapler away; work for 5 minutes, remove
pen from child's nose; work for 5 minutes, then spend 2
hrs cleaning up,” you’ll not only want childcare,
you’ll need it!
Myth 4:
I will be able to run all my errands and do all my housework...and
still handle all my work.
The laundry
will become mini-mountains in front of the washing machine.
The dishes will pile up until you need to use the cat bowl
for your breakfast cereal. The banking will get done once
a month. Your grocery shopping will become a mad dash as
you grab random items off the shelves. All of this will
be because your client calls you up on Friday night on his
way to the cottage, and he needs to have a week's worth
of work done "over the weekend."
Myth 5:
I'll be my own boss, and work when I want to, and take time
off whenever I want to.
Actually,
this is true. Being your own boss means you can choose your
own hours! Yep! You get to choose which 20 hours out of
every day that you want to work, and which 4 hours of every
day that you can have all to yourself. You will be a slave
to your contracts—you will work nights, weekends,
and holidays—anything to meet your deadlines.
Myth
6: People won't take advantage of
the fact that I am home. They will respect my designated
work hours.
Working from
home is an excuse for everybody and anybody to procrastinate
from their own lives; to bring the kids by, to have a cup
of coffee, to stop by while running errands, to call to
gossip in the middle of the day, and on and on. You’ll
quickly realize that people do not respect your home office
and working hours.
Myth
7: I will treat my work just like
a real job onsite.
Wrong. If
you treat your work at home career like most people treat
their onsite career, you will definitely fail. Working from
home is nothing like an onsite job. You will have to be
more dedicated, more responsible, more obsessed about perfection
than you ever were onsite. After all, you are competing
against millions out there who all want the same job you
do! You have to be better, smarter, more efficient, and
more capable that others in your field or you won't stand
a chance!
Myth 8:
I will dress up every day to start my workday with an attitude
of professionalism.
Yes, you will...for
the first week. After that, you will find it easier to just
keep your pajamas on all day....and then you will start
to wear the same pajamas for days on end. When you bathe,
you will change from one set of pajamas into another set
of pajamas because it's easier than changing into "real
clothes."
Myth
9: I will make the same wages as I did
when I worked onsite.
Actually,
no. You can make a lot more money than you did onsite, but
you will have to work twice the number of hours to do it,
because you will have to constantly improve upon your skills
and learn more than your peers to stay competitive.
You're starting
to get the picture, right? Telecommuting is hugely different
from what you may have imagined it to be! It is hard work
and long hours with no social life at all. So, right about
now, you're either thinking that you would rather not do this
or you're thinking that this is EXACTLY what you want to do
with your life! If the latter, welcome to the world of the
work-at-homes and best of luck to you!
=================================================
This article is excerpted from “You
Can Work in Your PJs”, a real world guide to telecommuting.
Sylvie Fortin works from home full time and wrote this book
to share her unique techniques with others. You can download
your copy of “You Can Work in Your PJs” by visiting
http://www.inyourpjs.com
=================================================
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To your work at home success...!
Sylvie Fortin
Founder and CEO
Workaholics4hire.com Inc.
support@workaholics4hire.com
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