Working from home – Finding your groove
Yesterday’s post on working from home – the isolation talked about how lonesome it can be to be self-employed and not surrounded by coworkers in an office. However the cure to that is working from home and finding your groove.
It took me months to find mine. I was keeping the strangest hours my first few months of freelancing – it was to bed by 3am, maybe 4, and up around 11am. But then I realized that I was missing out on the first three or four hours of “regular” “normal” working time (no wonder it was to hard to set up interviews – why weren’t people willing to chat at midnight?!). I was missing peak times in the first part of the day with all my social media, like Facebook and Twitter.
And besides, I was missing Cosby Show reruns (go ahead – I can take the abuse).
Now several years into working from home and I’ve found my groove. My best writing time is in the morning and for some reason the creative juices start waning by noon, so if I’m up at 10am I only get in two really solid hours of writing. What does that mean? It means that when I’m pulling a six-article day I’m up at 4am – that way I have an eight-hour day before lunchtime (and boy, am I like a steam engine in those eight hours!). I’ve come to realize that I need a break mid-afternoon to clear my head, so that’s usually when I shower, change, have lunch, and walk the dog. Then it’s a few more hours of story ideas, catching up on emails, doing interviews, and a bit of accounting, and I’m punching out by 4pm (ok, 3pm).
Working from home is all about finding your groove. When it your best quiet creative time? When do you need a break? Then you can plan your day accordingly.








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