Ways of Being: Life Coaching to Heal Your Life!
Marlene Shiple, Ph.D. The Life Coach Dr.: Heal Your Past + Heal Your Thoughts + Heal Your Self => Heal Your Life!

Mar

7

Home-Office: Want a Office at Home?

Filed Under Emotional Healing, Life Coaching, Mental Healing

Working from home brings numerous benefits to your lifestyle, however, it can present two major challenges:
* Separating business and home life,
* Lack of stimulating social (business-related) interaction.

1.  Plan for the Best Use of Your Home-office Space
Always make sure before you start working at home to make a plan for your home office, it will make working much easier and you will find it much less expensive when you have planned it out.

2.  Decide How Much Room You Need for Your Office
Have it be a dedicated area — preferrably a space with quiet and privacy.  Perhaps, you might choose a room with a door, which can help filter noise from the rest of the house; or, you might select a room near the front entrance if you will be meeting with clients in your home office.

3.  Let Your Home-office Reflect the Professional You
Plan your home office with your well-being and productivity in mind. What colors, images, items make you feel happy, appreciated, successful, creative? What placement helps you to focus and be productive?  Consider your chosen field — what will most allow your home-office to reflect the feeling you want to project into the world.
4.  Separate Professional from Personal
It is important to keep your personal life separate from your business life, and vice versa.   For example, create your home office as far from your bedroom as possible; and keep your business checking-account and office credit-card expenditures apart from your personal finances.  As an added benefit, you might be able to use your home-office as a tax deduction.  The more you can prove that the office is a completely separate and dedicated area, the better in terms of meeting IRS definitions of a home office.  [For specific questions about your own taxes, see IRS Publication 587 (Business Use of Your Home) or consult a tax specialist for details.]

5.  Establish Office Hours
Flexibility is one of the key benefits of working in a home-office.  Setting a schedule for work in your office can help you stay focused. It can also help clients know when you are most apt to be available
and reachable for business.  Having routine office hours can help minimize distractions and unannounced “drop ins” by neighbors and friends.

I encourage you to use these tips over and over to make sure that your home-office experience is both rewarding and successful!

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