Consulting Journal: Techniques

This article is reprinted from The Consulting Journal
http://www.consultingjournal.com

Techniques: Working at home

by David Blakey

Some basic guidance for taking work home.

[Monday 26 July 2004]

Some people, including many consultants, work from home. Their home is their base. Usually, in the past, these people have been self-employed. Although most people who work from home are still self-employed, many are employees. For these people, the organization's offices are a place to meet. Their real work is done at home.

Other people, including all consultants, work at home. Their home is not their base. They just take work home with them sometimes.

There is a whole range of people between those who are dedicated home-workers and those who occasionally take work home. Often, the advice given to people does not recognise the differences. As an example, some of the advice assumes that people who always work from home have home offices and that people who sometimes work at home do not. In reality, some home-workers can work well in their sitting-rooms or at the kitchen table. Some people who occasionally work at home need to sit at the desk in their study.

As consultants, we have probably all met two kinds of client. One has an office where the sofas are simply status symbols: the clients stays behind his desk. The other kind spends most of his time on a sofa, talking to people and only goes to his desk for papers. Thanks to current technology, this person does not need a desktop computer any more.

In our own homes, we can use different spaces for different tasks, if we wish. We can read papers on a sofa, write reports at a desk, and check drafts and references at the kitchen table. For some of us, the time of day can influence where we are and what task we can do best. In the morning, after everyone else has left the house, we might sit at a desk and handle our email. Then we might sit at the kitchen table with a coffee while we go through the post. Each of these times and situations can be ideal for a particular consulting task.

Again, some of us do our best writing in the morning and our best editing during the afternoon. So we could be at the computer in the morning and on a sofa with our printed drafts and pencils in the afternoon.

Here is my plan for people who sometimes work at home.

Analyze your style

Observe what you do best under what circumstances. Let's look at writing. Some people do their best writing if they prepare their first drafts on a computer and then edit those drafts on paper. Others work best by using a computer throughout all their drafting and editing. Others work best if they write their drafts on paper and then do their editing on a computer. Find out what works best for you in every task that you do. Remember that working in an office is essentially social. So you may need quiet to do some tasks and you may be able to do others in between talking to people and answering the telephone.

Identify tasks for home

Now you can identify the tasks that you can do best at home. There is no formula that I can apply, based on your analysis of your work style, because it depends upon your home. Some people may perform some tasks best when they sit quietly alone on a sofa, with no interruptions. If they have a separate room at home in which they can do this, then that will work for them. If they cannot get a space where they can work quietly, without interruption, then their home will not work well for those tasks. Other people may perform some tasks well regardless of interruptions, so they will not need a quiet place either at work or at home.

Map the timing

If you are considering doing some work at home, then consider when you can the timing. If you have children who return from school each weekday afternoon, that will affect the tasks that you can do before they arrive and after they arrive. People who share your home may have commitments during weekday evenings. People and children may have commitments at weekends.

If you take a child to a dance class on Saturday morning, you may wait for an hour at a performing arts centre. Consider the tasks that you can do there.

I have worked with some people who do not normally work at home. Sometimes these people have gone home at the the start of the weekend, full of good intentions about completing work at home, and they have returned to work after the weekend, full of remorse because they did not manage to do any work. In most cases they really did intend to work, but their weekend schedules just did not provide big enough gaps for them to do it. You need to know the timing of events at your home. Allow for events that are not routine. Estimate when callers are likely to arrive unannounced.

Fit it together

You can combine your analysis of your work style, your identification that tasks that you do well at home, and your mapping of the timing of events in your home to produce a plan of what kind of work you can take home and when you should take it home. Write it down.

Evening
magazine articles of general interest in my field
Internet research for client reports
Weekend
draft reports for editing, if the final report is due on or after Wednesday
personnel review material for staff appraisals on Monday

Use your plan

You should use your plan to pack your briefcase. Begin with an empty briefcase. (Your briefcase should be emptied each morning, anyway. Briefcases are for transport, not for storage.) During the day, toss magazine articles and papers of general interest into your briefcase. You will read them at home if you have time. You will certainly take them out of the briefcase at home, even if you do not have time to read them that evening.

Keep a pad for notes on work to be done at home. You can note tasks such as Research best practice on VPN security. At the end of the day, put the pad in your briefcase.

Before you go home, add anything that you need for tasks that you will do at home. Make sure that the tasks fit with your plan. According to the plan above, I would only take home draft reports at the weekend.