h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just about kind of been offered this job which is working form home.

Now, I can see many many benifits from working from home as compaired to, say, for example the last job I applied for which would have involved an hour and half in the morning and evenign travelling to and from work, with a £03000 bill for train travel a year.

But Do you think it'd be possible for me to work from home, without* just giving up working and spending all my time on here and surfing the net?

It takes a heck of a lot of self-discipline...

I currently work with two guys who've both worked from home prior to coming here - the problems they encountered were:

1) It's easy to be distracted by things around the house... There's laundry to be done, a good film on the TV, websites to surf, shopping to be done... It's much harder to separate work from home-life.

2) You end up going stir crazy... As you're stuck in the house all day every day you end up _having_ to get out of the house in the evening just to see another human being... Which generally means going down the pub (not only expensive - but people have ended up alcoholics that way)

3) Unless you have a spare bedroom you can transform into an office then your work ends up getting in the way of your home life (papers strewn across the living room floor etc.)

4) You can't 'switch off' and forget about work... walking out of the office door means you can say to yourself 'sod it - I know I've a metric c**pload of work to do - but it can wait till tomorrow' - if you're sat at home doing it you could find yourself either working till 3 in the morning or alternatively, be unable to forget about the work you've got waiting on the computer and feeling guilty about not doing it.

The plus sides are more obvious... More flexible working hours, no travelling expenses... but it's not an easy life by a long chalk!

Buy two hats........a 'w*rk' hat,to keep you focused on w*rk.............. and a 'hootoo' hat, for when you are here.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..........you'd be known as 2hats, instead of 2legs

2Legs, I don't think you could manage it, unless:

1. You ban yourself from h2g2 for at least 8 hours each day, times to be specified in advance.

2. You don't keep any alcohol in your house.

The hat idea I'd already decided on; well simular to that anyhow: even through I'd be working alone at home, I decided that if I do get the job, I'll put on me suit tie and shirt in the morning to 'go to work' in yes, even though it'l be just walking into the spare room or lounge, but it wound't feel right sitting at the PC doing work speaking to clients wearing nothing but a thong At the moment I spend all day in teh house anyhow so that wouldn't be too different, and as for going to the pub every night, well, heck i kinda used to do that anyhow It is avoiding the 'net' destractions and 'house' distractions that would be difficult; tempting just* to put a load of washing on etc....

I've been doing it for 6 months now and I love it!

My situation is possibly slightly different, as I'm self-employed rather than being an employee who works at home. In some ways, this makes it worse, as there's no-one to tell me off if I'm not doing enough work. Then again, as long as I hit my deadlines, then presumably I *am* doing enough work...

The way I cope is to keep a fairly strict diary of everything I need to do each day. If I get through everything in my diary, then it doesn't matter if I get a little distracted. I also try to stick to office hours as far as possible, although I don't go so far as to dress differently when I'm working - I have been known to sit through entire teleconferences in my dressing gown

Well I'd be kind of self employed but working for the one firm and as its comission baded, I guess* that if I do well at it, I could meet the targets etc., as quick as pos, then just pull out a bottle of wine and hang work for the res tof the day I'm very very tempted

It's great in theory, but there are always the days that end up having to work late (or start early) to meet the targets. You just have to hope that the days you can relax a bit outweigh the days when it's frantic. But then, that's probably the same with an office-based job!

I don't know if it'l be much late working into the evening with the jbo, as its mainly concerned with speaking to Managing directors and the like, I don't know if they hang about their offices till late in teh evening, so they'd not be about to talk too; early mornign work perhaps, but that isn't too bad, so long as I can head off to the pub each night at 7

Directors work all the hours Bob sends, trust me.

I think you'd need to really love the work. Otherwise you'll procrastinate, feel like a prisoner, and find all sorts of urgent household repairs - "urgent" in the sense that you've managed well enough to ignore them for the past ten years, so they *must* be urgent by now!

Working from home isn't easy.
I've been freelance for 5 years and the biggest problem is the distraction factor.
I had to tell none working friends that just 'cos i was at home it didn't mean i was always free for a chat or to help out.
I love the freedom but it can get tedious ~ it really depends what i'm doing on any given day.
If its interesting and engages the brain then i get on ok but some days its just so boring i end up wandering around places like this just to wake myself up.

I've got the job. So here comes the hard work, pain agony, regret and remorse. oh no, that was for another job I'd applied for