Wednesday 2 December 2009

The Loneliness of the Work-At-Home Mum

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find running my own business and working at home can be a lonely place.

When I started out, I knew that if I didn’t have some basic rules about when I was working, I would find myself pottering around the house and getting distracted by ‘This Morning’ so I am very strict about separating my work-self from my home/mum-self. However, there are still some days when I catch myself day-dreaming too much and I talk to myself far too much!

I wouldn't change it; working for myself is my favourite of all the working mum options, but I want to share with you something that happened a couple of weeks ago that worked brilliantly for me (and a friend) and gave me a refreshing working change:

Kirsten, a friend of mine who also runs her own business (got to give her a shout out... www.isyourbagpacked.co.uk) was struggling to make herself sit down and do one of the jobs that she hates with a passion.... Bank reconciliations. Now, I’m with her on this in that I am not so keen on doing my accounts either! However, I’ve been unashamedly nagging her for ages to get started on them and they’ve been getting more and more out of date.

So, a couple of weeks ago Kirsten asked me if she could come and work at my house for the day so she didn’t have any distractions. She had previously been managing to convince herself that tidying out some random cupboard was much more urgent than the task in hand!

In today’s wonderfully technological world, this is easy. I have a wireless internet connection and Kirsten has a laptop. All she needed to do was put her files and laptop (and her dog!) in the car, and come on over. So she did.

I don’t mind admitting that when I originally said yes to this idea I was slightly curious as to whether we would actually get our work done, or whether it would be a day of gossip, tea and biscuits which we are both quite capable of and happy to do!

However, it was great. It took me back to the days when I actually worked in a ‘proper’ office with other people beside me:

We made each other tea, we stopped for a lunch break, we used each other as an occasional sounding board for things that we were working on, we used each other for motivation when we were flagging on the tasks in hand, we had a laugh and a chat (of course!) but we both got LOADS of work done :-)

So since then we’ve done it again, and I imagine we might carry on doing this when it suits both of our diaries.

There are more and more of us work-at-home mums, but it hadn’t ever occurred to me that you don't have to be a ‘work-at-YOUR-home’ mum. We can start a new trend and bring the equivalent of hot-desking to our world!

What would you call yourself then? ‘Work-at-Any-home Mum’, ‘Work-anywhere-where-there-is-tea-on-offer Mum’?!

I would really recommend this - if the opportunity arises give it a whirl and see if it works for you.
x