Even home workers get the blues

Whether you own your own business, work from home, or have a day job that follows you home like a lost, hungry mutt every night, self-enforced boundaries are the key to harnessing work and carving out time for a life.

Especially if you work from home you may think you’ll have “more time,” but this illusion can be dangerous.

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“People have this vision that working from home is going to be so freeing; in reality it’s quite the opposite,” according to Shane Siegfried, a Focal Point Certified Business Performance Coach in Fort Collins. “Without boundaries you’re going to be 100 percent working all the time and 100 percent at home all the time. Both parts can overtake your one life. Even though you feel you have more time, it’s like carbon dioxide, it’s odorless and colorless. It lulls you to sleep and the next thing you know you’re dead or your business is dead or your spouse has left you and your kids hate you.”

To avoid this worst case scenario, experts suggest using time blocking, outsourcing, reigning in the Blackberry, prioritizing and rituals.

Siegfried says he’s “absolutely fanatical” about time blocking – marking out chunks of your day with several categories.

“Schedule your personal time first. Family time, things that keep you sane, working out; then what is left over is for work,” Siegfried recommends.

Keep the work time simple, narrowing your “42 million things to do” down to a legitimate three to four – maybe marketing, bookkeeping, making sales calls and networking, Siegfried said. When someone calls you to say they’d like to meet with you, you can look at your calendar and know what meeting space you have available.

Tracy Monthei, owner of Enchanted Threads in Fort Collins and author of “13 Things To Consider,” an e-book about working from home, uses time blocking to set her hours and stick to them.

“You can’t do it all, so you have to set your priorities,” she said. “For me, the priorities are my children. I make sure volunteering at their school and taking them to TaeKwonDo is on my calendar, so I know that this is not a time when I can meet somebody. If you have to keep odd hours, make sure you’re making up for that on the other end by scheduling the family and personal time. You can’t take care of your family if you’re not taking care of yourself.”

Be smart with your smartphone

The smartphone is a useful invention if you’re not letting it run your life. Stop answering your phone like it’s 1980 and voicemail hasn’t yet been invented. Likewise, don’t answer e-mail and texts during off hours or on weekends.

Siegfriend calls this “training your clients.” If you’re answering messages after 6 p.m., you’re training your clients to expect you to be available. If you don’t, the clients understand and expect you to get back to them in the morning.

“Someone told me once not to pick up the phone immediately,” recalled Matthew McIntosh, a WorldPay account executive who works from his Fort Collins home office. “I tried it and I realized that not only do I finish what I’m doing, but I’m able to research their (voicemail) question so that I’m prepared when I call them back.”

Business can become like an octopus. “If we didn’t have clear, defined parameters or boundaries it would spill over into all parts of our lives,´ said Marie Hornback, owner of HMS Protocol & Etiquette Training and Sign With Prestige in Fort Collins. “The only time I would ever check my smartphone (at home) is if it were urgent or I knew the only time someone could call me would be in the evening. That is very, very rare, not even twice a year. I absolutely do not go home and then keep following up with my e-mails. I do not go home and then start doing any type of work.”

Switch gears with ritual

Ritual plays an important role for those who work out of their homes. Having a ritual tells your mind and body that you’re switching gears from work to home.

“When I started working from home I thought, ‘Oh, it’s great, I can work in my pajamas,'” McIntosh said. “I can’t. I wear a uniform, a self-imposed uniform. By taking off my work shirt and putting on blue jeans and a T-shirt I’m no longer at the office. I make it very clear cut. I take my son to school and then I go into my office. At the end of the day I make a conscious effort to say, ‘It’s 5:30 or 6, hey, I need to go home.’ I turn off my office light and shut my door.”

Such rituals help keep work and home separate. Without them, McIntosh said, “with my personality I’ll work all the time. When you work at an office, there’s still that feeling of ‘walking away.’ I had to artificially set that up for myself. At the end of the day, I take my work phone off my hip and leave and I don’t answer my work phone because I’ve left work. It’s my way of keeping sanity. I have to have a time to calm down.”

Maybe it’s as simple as shutting the office door and turning the phone off so you don’t hear it, or maybe a little more elaborate disconnect. “I’ve known people who walked out the back door and come around to the front door,” Monthei said.

Hire a professional

Outsourcing is gathering steam as a way to get more done without having to sacrifice a life, whether its help with childcare or hiring freelancers.

“People think they can’t afford it because they have 40 hours a week in their mind,” Siegfried pointed out. “But there are people that will do contract work for specifically what you need them to do. They’re going to do it faster than you can, you’ve got it off your plate and it frees up more of your time to do more of your other work.”

“I do a lot of outsourcing, so that my main focus is on sales. You can’t do it all,” Monthei agreed.

Corey Radman, a freelance writer in Fort Collins, doesn’t need full-time help. “I use the drop-in daycare center for my son, while my daughter’s at school when I need to do interviews and that works perfectly.”

Tiffany and Gary Blackden owners of GTS Therapeutics and Networking Fort Collins, alternate shifts at work and shifts with their children. When that isn’t possible, they utilize babysitters and also use Kidstown Drop-In Child Care Center in Fort Collins.

“I don’t think we can ever go back to an office where we wouldn’t have flexibility around our family life,” Tiffany Blackden said. “It’s important to how we build our lives.”