Sunday, May 6, 2007

Balancing Work And Family

Being able to spend more time with family is a popular incentive for people looking to work from home, and it is also a reason that many home-based businesses fail. You need to be able to perform a delicate balancing act to ensure that you will have time for your family while concurrently running

a successful business in your home.

Just as you would schedule an appointment with a client, it's essential to set aside time for your family. When you work in an office you are, in essence, already doing this. You "schedule" in your family for the waking hours of the day that you are not at work. The same holds true when your business is run from home.

It is important to stick to a schedule when you are working from home. This is much easier during the school year, but it can become almost impossible during vacations. When your family sees you at home, they naturally assume you are at their beck and call.

You need to watch out for the other extreme as well. Resist the urge to work at all hours and cut into valuable time, which you should be spending with your family. You need the support of your family in this new venture, and spending too much time working may have the opposite effect.

Sit down with your children and discuss why you started working from home and stress the importance of being able to get your work done. Explain to them the importance of your income and what that money means to them — food, a roof over their heads, the shoes on their feet. This is an excellent way to educate your children not only on respecting your time but also on the realities of the world.