Important Tips for a Successful Telecommuting Experience

Telecommuting: What an exciting opportunity that also brings with it its share of trials and tribulations! Being able to work from home and telecommute is a wonderful and freeing adventure, but there are definitely a few tips that you need to keep in mind to make sure that you have a great experience for your long-term work-at-home career.

• Set your own schedule. Setting your own schedule and hours for working at home is truly exciting and freeing because now you can spend more time with family, pick your kids up from school, and run a few errands. Right? Wrong! You may think that you are going to be working less and less from home, but the truth is that your e-mails will never stop coming in and your phone won’t quit ringing unless you set limits on the hours that you work.
• Start work at the same time every day. If you’re telecommuting for a company, then it is likely that they will require you to sign in to chat at a certain time. However, if you are creating your own schedule, it is best to stay on task in the same way that you would at an office by waking up and starting work at a clear cut time. This will prevent many hours lost and also ensure that you can finish work on time each day.
• Remember that less is more! If you find yourself being bombarded with e-mails while you are trying to work on a project at home, turn off your e-mail, and designate a few hours in the day that you will deal with these requests. Likewise, if your business line at home keeps ringing and ringing, turn it on to voicemail so that you can complete the task at hand and move on to your next assignment.
• Have your own office. If you don’t have the luxury of having an extra room in your home for an office, it still helps to set up a desk in your living room or bedroom that serves as your personal work space. This will ensure that you get the quiet you need, and it will also keep all of your work materials organized.
• Set boundaries with your employer. You may be working with a very respectful and kind employer that only contacts you during work hours, but many employers are prone to taking advantage of their telecommuting employees. This goes hand-in-hand with setting clear hours for your schedule, but make sure that you don’t respond to work-related calls or e-mails outside of working hours, unless it is an emergency.
• Log all of your hours. Make sure that you clearly account for your time so that you are paid for all of your work by your employer since you are not clocking in and out of a physical office. It also helps to list all of the tasks that you’ve done within a day so that your employer can have a clear idea of how your time is spent working at home all day long.

Bethany Ramos is a full-time freelance writer who has worked at home for two years. For a great selection of Bunn filters, check out Bethany Ramos’ website, The Coffee Bump.