21st Century Moms(& Dads) Working From Home

Working at home is growing at a phenomenal pace around the world. The beauty of it is that your time is your own and you can dig in anytime you want. Even large multinationals are now seeing the benefits of employing people in the home workplace. Because of the vast improvement of communications in the last 10-15 years, the home is now becoming its own office or company in its own right. All of the machines and instruments that were once only located in the work office can now be located and used just as efficiently in the home office. Powerful computers, fax machines and internet connections can now be easily installed in the home. Discipline and honesty are huge traits that have to be addressed when working from home. Procrastinating your work is not a problem as long as the work gets completed.

When working from home, the important matter is not when the work is done, it is that the actual work is being done. Many entrepreneurs that work from home will tell you that if they have missed work by running some errands during the day, they will complete the work later on that evening or they will do extra the following day. Until you reach a point in your life where you can pick and choose when and where you work, disipline is the foundation on which your work at home business will thrive.

Working at home is to spend more time with your children. "even though you may be paying for child care, you should still take a break and see others during the day—just as you would if you were working in a big company and went out to lunch with a coworker". Replace your chained-to-the-desk habits with these new ones. Get involved with local chapters of professional associations in your industry and/or your chamber of commerce. This has the added bonus of allowing you to network. "going to business-related events is constructive for your career and can keep you from burning out," says deborah arron, a seattle career consultant. Most organizations have monthly meetings and various committees and boards that you can join. To give yourself extra incentive to participate, offer to chair a committee or organize a special event.

For people who have busy lives and are starting at-home businesses, working from home is the best way to facilitate that. At the end of the day, they don't have to commute to another office but can tackle the goals of their new or supplemental business, from home. Mom's who choose to stay at home with their kids create a work environment out of a situation that already demands them to be at home. Students or low-budget businesses work from home to cut down on start-up costs and to lessen the burden of financial risks involved with starting new businesses. The idea of the flexibility that working from home offers people is perhaps one of the largest and most popular 'pluses' when people are making a choice to work from home. Visions of working comfortably from the patio deck, checking email from the comforts of the living room couch and rolling out of bed hours later than their counterparts who report to an office day-to-day are a few of the perks this flexible schedule offers work-from-home professionals.

For many people, this flexibility is a large driving factor in their choice to make a change toward home-businesses. The pros of working at home go far beyond the flexibility in working hours however. The cost of running an office or even commuting to work can be astronomical depending on a person's specific work situation. For business owners, renting office space, buying supplies, paying electric and other bills that go along with renting a workspace, can put a serious dent into the profits earned by the business. For those that commute, the cost of gas and the time it takes to go from home, to the office is another important consideration.