Challenges of Working from Home

"I now believe you!," a friend exclaimed to me the other day. "Working from home is HARD!"

My friend's husband just quit his top-level job to be a full-time consultant working from home. At the top of his list as the most difficult aspect of starting a home business is the part of working from home. He just couldn't work! Managing time is the worst part of it all for him, as he finds that even little things can be very distracting. Marketing his business is easy for him, but not the isolation and lack of group interaction. He finds it incredibly frustrating to the point that he enrolled himself in a time management class.

I could totally relate to his plight, though for very different reasons. Working from home was a breeze three years ago when I did not have any children. I could decide to work whenever I felt like it - any time of the day or night.

But not anymore. Now I have to schedule my working time around the demands of my 3-year old and 7-month old baby (and boy, the demands seem to be neverending!). I can only work when the baby takes a nap or sleeps at night - which means lots of sleepless nights for me. When presented with a window of opportunity, I do not have the luxury of telling myself that I am not in the mood to write, or that I do not want to work. I have to grab each and every opportunity that comes available - and it makes life so much more stressful than when I was an employee working from 9-to-5. At least as an employee, you are expected to do nothing else but work during the time period, and the environment is designed to maximize an employee's productivity.

I have updated an article I wrote a few years ago entitled "Top 10 Problems of Working at Home" which covers some of the most pressing problems a home-based entrepreneur may experience.