As you begin to become more established in your career it is only natural to begin to place your focus on your work. This causes you to accomplish more, find new and insightful ideas or perhaps even some exciting new methods that may increase your efficiency or productivity. Allowing your career to monopolize your time is also a great way to increase your stress.
Images of the high-powered executive type come to mind, with a keen eye and a sharp grasp on their success. These are also the same people that live and breathe their job, answering work related phone calls in the evening and sacrificing their personal time in order to to get further ahead. Perhaps you have friends that are like this, or maybe this description parallels with many of your own traits.
I’m not saying that placing emphasis on your career is a bad thing, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. However, there’s a difference between focusing on your job, and placing the right amount of focus on your job. Remember the old saying “you either live to work or work to live”? Which one applies to you?
Living to Work - It’s common knowledge that people who live to work experience higher levels of stress and stress related illnesses than people spend more time on an active and varied personal life. These people may also experience higher levels of professional success, fulfilling their goal current goal structure and allowing them to set new ones.
Working to Live – These people tend to enjoy a much more relaxed work life, content to work at a comfortable pace and accept whatever challenges that arise as they come along. They tend to lead more active social lives, and generally focus on accomplishing a wide variety of personal goals.
If you are finding it difficult to separate your work life from your home life you may find it beneficial to analyze how you’re going about it.
Determine Whether or Not You Want Them to be Separate – Some people decide that work and home must be separate, rather than coming to the understanding that it’s a personal choice. Some people, including myself, enjoy having a non-linear work environment. This means that I don’t have set work hours- some days I may finish work at 8 pm, other days I may be done by noon.
If you don’t actually want to separate the two environments, no amount of convincing will successfully accomplish it.
Analyze Your Work Space – If you have your office set up so that it is as homey as possible you may be sending your brain mixed messages. On one hand the brain recognizes that it’s at work, but on the other it sees conflicting images of home. Try keeping your work space professional and to the point, and save the homey nuances for what you’re at home.
Conversely, setting up your home to resemble your work space is likely to have the same effects.
If you are still unwillingly blending your home life with your work life, perhaps you are in need of a career or job change. After all, you manifest whatever results that you want.
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This advice could not have come at a better time for me. I tend to get caught up in the trap of wanting to be available when I am needed as well as develop more efficient and productive work processes. This equates into me spending time at home working on research to accomplish this. Needless to say, I reach burnout rather quickly. Again, very timely advice.
I totally agree with you!
especially this part below, I think we should love what we do and do what we love. Once we step into an industry, then we need to get something out of it instead of complaining how not good it is and how it is tearing you down day by day, think positively!
Dennis,
http://www.dennisli.com
Living to Work - It’s common knowledge that people who live to work experience higher levels of stress and stress related illnesses than people spend more time on an active and varied personal life. These people may also experience higher levels of professional success, fulfilling their goal current goal structure and allowing them to set new ones.
Working to Live – These people tend to enjoy a much more relaxed work life, content to work at a comfortable pace and accept whatever challenges that arise as they come along. They tend to lead more active social lives, and generally focus on accomplishing a wide variety of personal goals.
If you are finding it difficult to separate your work life from your home life you may find it beneficial to analyze how you’re going about it.
Determine Whether or Not You Want Them to be Separate – Some people decide that work and home must be separate, rather than coming to the understanding that it’s a personal choice. Some people, including myself, enjoy having a non-linear work environment. This means that I don’t have set work hours- some days I may finish work at 8 pm, other days I may be done by noon.
If you don’t actually want to separate the two environments, no amount of convincing will successfully accomplish it.
Analyze Your Work Space – If you have your office set up so that it is as homey as possible you may be sending your brain mixed messages. On one hand the brain recognizes that it’s at work, but on the other it sees conflicting images of home. Try keeping your work space professional and to the point, and save the homey nuances for what you’re at home.
Conversely, setting up your home to resemble your work space is likely to have the same effects.
If you are still unwillingly blending your home life with your work life, perhaps you are in need of a career or job change. After all, you manifest whatever results that you want.
A very nice blog. I always say to people that if they are unhappy with their job and are living to work, they need to find something else as soon as possible.
I work from home, but I do separate work from my personal life as much as I can, as then I have something to go to when I’m not working.
A very informative post. I work from home and think it’s very important that you do separate work from your personal life. Also working from home can give you a lot more freedom and time to spend with your family
i think working from home is a great idea, but if your going to do it you need to do youir homework first. You dont want to quit your job first and end up broke. making a website is a great idea but that aint easy and you really need to do your homework on this one.
I also think working from home will be the next big thing. There are thousands of shopping cart software companies out there that make it real easy to open a successful online business. I own a paintball site and in 2 months I was already selling 10+ products daily. I plan on expanding even more with google adwords, affiliate marketing and local marketing aswell. I too thought this was impossible but believe it or not, it was as easy as 1,2, 3.
You also do not need to have any website or programming skills as sofwares like crowncart.com comes with a built in WYSIWYG editor.
So anyone wanting to start a online business, do a google search for “shopping cart software” and try to find one that you like and start making money today.
Especially agree with the point about work space - make a visual distinction between the work and home environments
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I think this is one of the biggest barriers to success as far as working from home goes. It’s all too easy to slip into bad habits when you work at home. Having all your home comforts around you tends to make you a little too relaxed and it never really feels like you’re actually working. You have to cultivate extreme self discipline just to make any progress.
Thanks for your great post. Never a truer word was spoken
Dave Data Entry At Home’s last blog post..Lightning Fast Copy & Paste Operative Wanted
Never ever forget to live your life! Working from home is working from home, but it doesn’t mean you forget to live in it!
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Looking for a legitimate work from home job? Why not try homesourcing. Homesourcing is the transfer of service employment from the office to a home based location. Check out this web site for companies that offer homesourcing.
I think it is very smart to separate your work from home. As a stay at home dad working at home (currently my desk is in the living room), I find a lot of trouble separating the two.
If you have an office, or at least a space set aside for work, you will be more productive. This way, you can “go to work” and be productive, but you can also go back “home” at the end of the day. This way your mind separates the two and therefore should be better at both things.
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Now that I work at home, I love my work instead of simply working to live. I agree about keeping the home office professional… I do so much business now with the system I’m working that the mess could easily get out of hand. Thanks for the reminder!
I used to own a business and it took up ALL of my time. Doesnt matter where I was, I was working. Work was my life and when I look back it was horrible. I have no other memories other than working for those 7 years in my 20s. It was very stressful. I now realize that the company wouldnt have exploded if I took a day off or took my mind off things.
That company was sold and now I work from home. Working at home is even harder to separate, but every night and the weekends I turn off work and enjoy life. I sleep much better now.
Phil
http://MakeCashTomorrow.com
The information is well organized and I agree with your thoughts or ideas.
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I totally agree about keeping work space and home separate. As someone that has worked from home for a few years, the biggest change I made was giving my work area a makeover. I no longer take the laptop to the sofa or clean the house while on a call…i would never do that at an office. So I started “work hours” in our house. I found I am productive and happy having the two separate.
I found that if you are doing something you like in your work you it will naturally consume you. However, taking time to enjoy other things in life, such as vacationing and get aways, allows you to be able to mark time with family.
I’ve seen people do either well and poorly. Some people retreat into their work away from home. They become distant from their family and suffer as a result. Doing that balancing act is what is needed. That’s hard when more opportunities and responsibility come calling. And I’ve also seen work at home folks do horribly. Every time I’ve seen someone with a separate work area, they have done well. Those who didn’t always were caught up in family dramas.
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i no what your saying ive got the offfice in the shead (shop, storage) and i just get way more work done when im otut there. If i try and work in the house i just get side-tract all the time.