Comments on: Why More People Should Be Working From Home And How You Can

By: How to Work at Home | Mom Coming Home | My Journey from the Corporate World to Working at Home

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 07:06:49 +0000

[...] “Why More People Should Be Working From Home and How You Can” written by Dawud at eMoms At Home. Dawud has outlined some excellent tips on how to approach your boss with a proposal to work at home. Follow responses through the comments feed, trackback from your site or leave a comment. [...]

By: Des Walsh

Des Walsh — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 04:34:58 +0000

Dawud
Thanks for your comment on my post referencing this. In that comment you reiterated the suggestion covered in your last “work like a dog” bullet point above and I have to say that suggestion gives me some degree of discomfort. One of the challenges I’ve seen in others working from home is that they often work harder than they did when they were commuting, and are not necessarily better remunerated. Why encourage that sort of mentality? Most of the people doing this sort of thing are knowledge workers not process workers and logging productivity as distinct from hours worked is not an easy thing for knowledge workers – were you more productive at the keyboard or sitting with a coffee in the garden doing a mindmap?

What would you say to a more open discussion with a supervisor about how they measure productivity, asking what they would see as proving the new system worked? Perhaps I’m thinking like an employer or a boss, but some employers and bosses have been known to be capable of having enlightened views about what really constitutes productivity and not needing to have everybody in the workforce physically present and able to be watched for signs of slacking off. Would value your observations on that.

By: Mom Coming Home

Mom Coming Home — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:04:38 +0000

How to Work at Home…

I used to work outside of the home, and wasted many hours a year in commuting alone. In my article, “5 Benefits of Working at Home” I wrote about how working at home gives me more time: 2. More Time……

By: Dawud Miracle

Dawud Miracle — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 12:03:08 +0000

@Derek: Two hour commute because of construction…enough to send me over the edge. Good luck.

@Andrew: I’m with Wendy…

@Des: Good advice. Hasn’t been my concern in a long time. Thanks.

By: Des Walsh

Des Walsh — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:32:29 +0000

Dawud
No short answer on the office politics, but it is in one sense a sub-set of being part of the office community. I would suggest that it would be good to bring this in from the outset, as part of the negotiation with the employer/supervisor. Not with the phrase “office politics”, but being frank about not wanting to cut yourself off from the life of the office and being concerned not to be left out of the planning and decision-making loop. It’s about making the supervisors and colleagues aware that you want and expect to be included in. If a meeting is to be scheduled on one of your days at home, you want to know that well enough in advance to be able to get into the office if it is important enough, or for someone to call you,preferably on a speakerphone, from the conference, so you can have your say. It’s all about making clear you want to be a player in the game, not just hear about the game later and how you lost, sorry about that but, you know, you weren’t there. Hmm, I can feel a teleseminar series coming on

By: How To Test Working From Home and Still Keep Your Job : Thinking Home Business

How To Test Working From Home and Still Keep Your Job : Thinking Home Business — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:27:11 +0000

[...] at eMoms at Home, Dawud Miracle, in his post Why More People Should Be Working From Home And How You Can, celebrates the fact that for the past ten years he has not had to commute to work. He goes on to [...]

By: Wendy Piersall

Wendy Piersall — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:35:04 +0000

ROFLMAO Andrew!!!

By: Andrew Boyd

Andrew Boyd — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:15:22 +0000

Hi Dawud,

great post.

My RSS reader doesn’t show the subheads (like author name) so I did a double-take when I read the “getting up and shaving” bit (reading Wendy’s blog as I was), I had all sorts of images, OK, let’s not go there

Too many people do spend too much of their lives in commuting – I did work from home for a year or so (working for someone else) but when I did have to commute it was a two-hour highway exercise, which was just as unpleasant in its own way. I’m quite open to the idea of one day working for myself

Thanks, Andrew

By: Each moment has an opportunity cost - A 4 Hour Work Week Forum

Each moment has an opportunity cost - A 4 Hour Work Week Forum — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:32:06 +0000

[...] Want to work from home and need advice? Need some meaty lines to convince your boss about working from home? Check out Why More People Should Be Working From Home And How You Can – eMoms at Home – The Internet Home Busi… [...]

By: derek

derek — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:18:55 +0000

Dawud, I had just posted about the same topic over at Dad Balance and my commute has been killing me.

With all of the construction, I’ve been pushing 2 hours in the morning and about 1.5 on the way home. Over 4 work days, that is 14 hours per week in the car!

By: Dawud Miracle

Dawud Miracle — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:15:12 +0000

@Everyone: I, too, was shocked by the time people spend on their commutes. That’s why I had to write about it. Having not commuted in years, I can’t relate. I just know I don’t want to back there.

@Des: Great point on office politics and decisions. Off the top of my head, not sure what you could do about that. Any ideas?

@Susan: Yep, read it. And I coached someone on how to do this more than a year ago. We created a plan and she worked it through step-by-step. It took 4 months, but she was working from home 90% of time (she actually wanted to be in the office a couple days per month). I wonder how she dealt with office politics. We didn’t talk about that.

By: Vjai

Vjai — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:07:48 +0000

Well… Tht was a crazy bit of calculation and analysis done by u.. Funny but itz absolutely true…

By: Adam Kayce : Monk At Work

Adam Kayce : Monk At Work — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:07:01 +0000

I’m already a work-at-homer, so I’m down with this already…

I just wanted to mention that there’s another good post about this (sans the Dawud flair, of course) at Tim Ferriss’ blog (which Joann mentioned), here.

It was so recent, I couldn’t help think of the synchronicity.

By: Susan Payton

Susan Payton — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:36:21 +0000

You’ve read “4 Hour Workweek!”

I find that I get more done in a single hour than I used to in 4 hours working for someone else, because I would greet everyone who stopped by and find a million reasons to get distracted. Now I sit at my computer until my stomach growls 4 hours later!

By: Joann

Joann — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:06:12 +0000

One of my favorite books “The 4 hour work week” by Tim Ferriss talks about this. He also talks about how to decide what to ignore so you have more time. He recommends only checking email once or twice a day, and has other info-overload tips.

Anything that allows us to have more of a life is a good thing!

Joann

By: Des Walsh

Des Walsh — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:35:02 +0000

Great post, Dawud. I don’t miss the commute either. Years ago, when what was then and sometimes still is called, quaintly and misleadingly, “telecommuting”, first started to be noticed, I asked a manager how he knew that people at home were actually working. His not totally whimsical reply was “how do I know they are working when they are in the office”? As a former CEO, I related. But you make a good point about the value of logging what you do during the experimental phase. There is one downside risk I’ll probably post about myself, which is that if you are out of the office you can be out of the loop on office politics, which can mean you get excluded from decisions, or even blindsided. You need to factor in whether that is likely and if so how much or how little it matters to you.

By: James

James — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:33:02 +0000

I think I just heard that statistic also-it’s staggering.
Soon I will be ending my own daily commute. My main goal is to get so I do not have to take my wife to work either.

By: lornadoone

lornadoone — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:26:57 +0000

I find it fascintaing to take that amount of time spent in the vehicle and add to it the cost of gas and maintenance – plus whatever you spend in lunches, etc. at work. When I started working from home a couple of years ago, I had a smaller paycheck, but I didn’t end up losing out on that much actual pay once it was adjusted for these numbers.

By: Kaj

Kaj — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:11:32 +0000

That’s why I go cycling. I have had my cycling training and come home and feel very well. That’s even better then working at home.
I think that the best thing would be working at home and go cycling every day and don’t feel the pressure of getting in time at work.