Managing work in a chaotic household

The other day in my job sucks more than yours we looked at some of the perils of working at home. From distracting kids, to friends and family who believe you’re sitting around eating bon bons all day, to finding a coffee shop with non-sticky tables and more, working at home can be a nightmare at times. Here’s how to make it better…

Have a dedicated office space with a door you can shut: If you can’t have this now, or don’t foresee having this in the very near future, working at home honestly may not work out unless you live alone. Kids don’t get that an office space in a common area still means you’re working, and worse (in my experience) neither do the adults you live with. Also, people will take stuff from your office so good luck finding a pen when you need it. With a closed door people leave you and your stuff alone far more often. If you’ve got say, a spouse who works and kids who are in school then a common area office can work, but it’s still not helpful on snow days, sick days, weekends, holidays, and summer break. I’ve had both situations and having my own office with a close-ready door is about 95% better than a common area office.

IF you don’t have a closed door office: You can try some different things if there’s no way for you to get a personal office space at home. Some are more realistic than others, and none are that great, but I’ll list them just in case one might work for you…

Rent a space – if you’re a prolific writer and make nice wages renting a space might be an option, although, most of the writers I know can’t afford this option. Plus there’s travel time to consider; this makes working at home, not so much working at home.

Get a screen – at one point in my life I had a common office space that was blocked off with a large shelf. I’m not sure why, but people left me alone more. Maybe it’s the whole outta sight, outta mind deal at play.

Work off hours – work when other people for sure won’t be in the common space. This is best if you live with just one person. Once you start trying to juggle more than two people’s schedules in regards to a common space it becomes difficult.

Move to the least annoying common area – yesterday I was fed up to the breaking point so I moved my office from the living room to my bedroom. Our home situation is this; my boyfriend works from 3am-noon; my son attends school from 9am or so to 4 or 5pm; when my boyfriend’s daughters are here they take over the living room and extra bedroom. Basically I’m almost never the only person at home minus maybe three hours each weekday. That said, I moved to the master bedroom, where technically my boyfriend sleeps from noon to 7pm or so BUT since we have other sleeping spaces in the house he’s sleeping elsewhere while I work. It’s not perfect but at least I can go in the bedroom and shut the door vs. having people milling around me in the living room.

Turn off the phone: When I’m working during the day, I leave my phone on vibrate only. This way I can see if my son’s school calls but ignore everyone else. Telling people not to call won’t work, because they don’t believe that you’re actually working.

Learn to say no: Because I work at home I’m the go-to friend for emergency childcare, school events, errands, and more. I actually don’t have the time for any of this and learning to say so to others early on is in your benefit. If you’re a yes person people will treat you like it.

Minimize other distractions: If you don’t have a good office space then minimizing distractions so you can make the most of the quiet work time you do have is important. In fact I’ve even cut out email during my work time for the most part.

Ideally your goal, if you want to be a pro writer for life should be a closed door, quiet, distraction-free work space. Until you get that though you can try the options above or offer some other ideas in the comments.

How do you manage work in a chaotic household?

I didn’t check my email all day… AND the world didn’t end!

I’m detouring from our get a job series today to gloat. If you want to review the current series check out…

• How to get blogging jobs and web writing jobs – getting started
• Finding blog gigs – starting out with no clips
• How to get a blogging job – advice from b5media’s hiring editor
• How to get a blogging job – advice from Deb Ng of FWJ

Now on with the gloat – I didn’t check my email and survived to tell you about it!

I’m super frustrated right now because I’m moving August 1st, which means I need to post ahead for a few days so I can take said days off to move. PLUS have I even packed (ha) – not even one box. I’m busy and tired and looking for ways to cut out distractions. I can’t cut out the typical distractions like Twitter or Facebook because it’s part of my job (for some clients) to visit those types of spots.

However, email is not technically a requirement. I tend to check mine a lot anyhow because I get so much email. It’s scary to think if I don’t check it, I’ll open it up ten hours later to pages of stuff to sort. I check my email during the day and while I do check it on a schedule, it always distracts me for longer than it should. I start answering emails, bookmarking PR stuff, get mean reader email and have to find a friend to rant to, and so on. It’s a time waster, but I didn’t know how much until today.

Yesterday I was sorting email and I just had it. I got one lame email too many and decided to NOT check my email for a whole day and see what happens.

I checked my email in the evening on Sunday and then didn’t even allow myself to open it all day Monday. It was nerve wracking. I kept thinking “Who is trying to get in touch, maybe I missed some key press release, maybe there’s some life-changing email in there…. ahhhhhhhh!” But I stood strong and left the email alone and low and behold I got a ton more work than usual done.

Cutting out scheduled email checks during my day saved me an estimated two hours. It was cool and sort of freeing plus with two extra hours I got more work done.

What about when I finally did check it – how crazy was it?

Honestly, not that bad. I found it was actually easier to wiz through all the email at once, deleting a ton of junk, category marking others, then I spent a little time answering people. All in all it took about an hour. Go me.

If you’re looking for a way to gain some time I highly suggest holding off on email time – in fact I may try only checking it every other day! Well, that would require more will-power so we’ll see…

What’s your email schedule look like? Is it distracting you too? For more advice read: Are you too distracted at work.

Are you too distracted at work?

If you work as a blogger / web writer, you may find yourself getting super distracted often when you come across fun stuff to see and read. It’s also easy to get distracted when networking; sure Twitter can help you score gigs, but if you’re on there all day chatting, you won’t get much real work done.

I’m not immune to distractions. In one sense I’m lucky because I get to write mostly topics I love, but since part of my gigs is finding news and cool new products related to said topics I love, it’s easy for me to waste time browsing cool gear and then I get off track and lose work time.

To stay on track try the following…

Schedule everything!: I schedule every single thing I do online during my workday, or I’d never get anything done. And by everything, I do mean everything. I blog and do social media networking for clients and I’ve got time slots on my work schedule for all my tasks related to both. My schedule has time slots for lead searches, actual posting, commenting at other blogs, stumbling, email management, answering blog comments, Facebook, Twitter, and all the other little tasks I do at my jobs. For example, I love reading and commenting at other blogs, but since most of my gigs only require a little of that, I have to plan it, or trust me, I might do it happily all day, and not get my posts done. I use a schedule that has little check-off boxes on it, because there’s something about little boxes that makes me work. If I see five little boxes that need to be filled in with tweets for a client, I’ll do it.

Time it all: I’m more a fan of check-off-boxes vs. timing, because I know in my head how long tasks take me, but some bloggers I know use a timing method vs. boxes. For example, set your timer, or watch the clock as you do tasks, which could look like the following….

• 9 am – Network for blog one.
• 10 am – Posts for blog two.
• 10:30 am – Answer emails.
• 11 am – Catch up on news feeds.
• 11:30 am – Posts for blog three.
• 1 am – fun / personal social networking stuff (your own tweets, forums, and stumbling).
• And so on.

Set a time limit: If I find a story I’m dying to blog about, I will sometimes research it to death. TIME waster. Once I find a lead, I give myself a set amount of research time. If, at the end of that time, I don’t have enough info, I set the story aside for later. Same with images. If I have an idea in my head about an image for a post, and can’t find it in a few minutes, I settle for something less perfect.

Know what you’re writing about today: I usually jot down what I’ll be posting about in the morning, and it helps to keep me more on track than deciding on the fly what I’ll be posting about.

Use a weekly schedule: Another way that some bloggers stay on track is to go by a weekly schedule vs. a daily. I.e they do all their posting at blog one on Monday, blog two on Tuesday, blog three on Wednesday, use Thursday for paper work and misc tasks, and break up networking a little each day. Weekly schedules are a total failure for me. I have to go by a daily schedule or I get distracted. Find what works for you.

Write offline: If you’re way too distracted, you can write your posts offline, then go online and in one swift swoop, post the pieces to your blogs, add links, and publish. In this case some discipline can be a virtue, because in my opinion it’s faster to simply write online and gather links as you go, but if you’re always getting distracted, you might save more time writing offline.

Plan for fun stuff last: One technique I use is planning the fun stuff that I know will distract me for last. My favorite part of my job is green product lead searches. I love finding breaking news about new items coming out, and I ALWAYS spend more time than I should doing it, so I make sure to plan this task last and usually on a slow day (for me a weekend day usually), so that my other tasks get done as well.

Turn Skype, IM, etc. on DO NOT DISTURB!: Self explanatory.

How do you keep from getting distracted from all the cool stuff going on in the virtual world?

[image via stock.xchng]