Work at Home Groundrules
A few weeks ago I was posting about being in the zone and how positive energy manifests good things. Well this week has not been good. You will have got a flavour from my posts about the “weasel”. Well things got worse by the end of the week.
This is imperative reading if you are thinking of working from home and it is something you need to get clear with your partner and family before you give up your day job!
GROUNDRULES
I need to take you back about 10 years to the first eruption!
Shortly after I first started working at home my wife, who commuted to London for her job, put some washing on the line outside before leaving for work. During the day, the heavens opened and down came the rain. Now being a focused individual I did not notice the rain, or at least it did not register that I was “expected” to bring in the washing. Upon return from work I was told in no uncertain terms how inconsiderate I’d been and it would only have taken 5 minutes etc etc.
Now had I still been working out of the house the washing would have got wet anyway and my stance was and still is – I am at work and anything to do with the household is not my concern (short of a fire perhaps!) I NEVER answer the home telephone during the working day – it is imperative to be totally disciplined or you end up with very blurred edges and you find yourself doing things that are not effective towards your goals.
So the family groundrules were put in place and there have been no issues until this Friday.
BROKEN GROUNDRULES
My youngest son was sick. My wife has a part time job that is important to her and on Friday she was the only one who would be in the office and she had to be there. I would “have” to look after the little boy – “I’ve checked your diary and you don’t have any appointments so it will be OK”.
Excuse me, but no meetings doesn’t equate to no important work!
I very reluctantly agreed in the full knowledge that the demands of an unwell 5 year old would stop me from achieving any of the tasks I had for the day.
I SAVE THE DAY!
At the risk of becoming something of a groupy I need to refer you to another post by Christine the Self Made Chick. Last week Christine took 7 hours to fully create a website she had been thinking about for some time.
Remembering her words I decided I would use what time I could during Friday to do something I’ve needed to do for the last 6 months but just haven’t got round to. Christine had effectively laid down a challenge, or rather I had to myself because of her action, and I decided I would create the website for my golf apartment.
I’d actually already decided I would use a Word Press blog rather than a website since my html is not good and I just find blogs so simple to construct. I really like the clean look of SelfMadeChick (that’s the site – I can’t comment further as I’ve not met Christine 
) and followed the link to the designer of that WordPress Theme, Cory Miller. Several of his Themes are free but I decided to spend a few pounds, well $ really, to get his Real Estate template that I thought would work well.
In between requests for drinks, cuddles and wiping of nose, I found a few plugins I wanted for the site (have you tried finding a really simple to install and use photo gallery? Most I’ve come across before caused all sorts of problems and are really difficult to install) and set about adjusting some photographs for the header and writing some of the text.
Now, I should point out, my design skills are not good but working with Cory’s template I created what I think is a very pleasing site. No, I didn’t get it finished in 7 hours, I didn’t actually record the time, but I did have the core built on Friday and finished off on Saturday. There are still a few sections to add but this hasn’t stopped my going live.
LESSON LEARNT
I could have spent all Friday fuming about the situation and effectively wasting an opportunity to get something done that was actually a drain on my energy since it was nagging away in the back of my mind.
We discussed the “issue” on Friday evening and the status quo has been resumed!
My Golf Apartment site is up, my mind is clearer and I have a sense of having achieved two really important things on Friday. Being with my son, who really appreciated his Dad being there for him and creating something with my time that was possible rather than dealing with a complex report that would have demanded my full attention and would never have got completed.
The week actually ended on a high and I’m back on a very positive roll!
If you are interested you can see the site I created here Costa-de-la-Luz-GolfHoliday
