The Biggest Drawback of Working Online From Home

Try using your laptop around your kids, it will make them happy just to be around you I am sure, put a movie on if they are distracting you too much, just being near them is good enough some times, and fills the social needs you are not getting from being isolated with your laptop.

Congrats on being able to work from home, I do as well and love it.

Distractions are the biggest problems for me as well but I am getting better and better thanks to a few tools, I use Workflowy as a daily map of where I am going and what I need to do..

I use Egg timer and give myself a limit time limits only working on 1 specific thing at a time and I am more productive. Trying to multitask doesn't work believe me. I also use google calendar.

Good luck ,

Gengis

Yes, one of the best productivity tricks I learnt recently is to use a timer (counting down for 30 or 60 minutes), during which you do your best to stay focused on the task at hand. It's working really well for me.

Maximising your productivity is absolutely crucial to maintaining discipline and self-motivation when working alone - and this is what I would tackle first if I were you.

@Gengis I've been looking for some tools like that. Thanks you.

I don't need a bunch of extra frills, so those look good. Wow! Workflowy is cool.

Just like @Gengis said, it's definitely important to place time limits on everything.

I have never been so happy since I've been able to create my own schedule and work from home.

I would recommend creating to-do lists every morning, numbering their priority, setting time limits, then knocking them out. If feels great and it keeps you moving forward!

If you find you're not spending enough time with your kids, you should have set work hours like a normal J.O.B. In that time you're "not at home" so you can work.
When that time is up, regardless of how much you have done, you must "go home" and be with your kids.
You'll find that attitude will improve your productivity because you'll focus on the important tasks first.

The biggest drawback is probably that you are sitting idle for a long time, without any human interaction or excercise or anything. But obviously you need to take breaks and get up and go out.

I'm not sure if this will be comforting to you or not, however be assured that your statement does not apply to every internet marketer's reality, and it does not have to apply to yours.

From the description of some of your activities which include reading forum posts, clicking on people's signatures and downloading free reports, it is obvious that you are lacking focus in building and growing whatever type of business or service you are aiming for.

You need a solid business plan and a set of goals to achieve, if not you will find yourself aimlessly venturing around online.

If you do have a business plan or certain goals however, might I suggest that you give yourself a maximum set of hours each day in order to complete them, for example 6 or 8 hours max. From a certain time to a certain time and then you are done for the day.

On a related matter, more importantly, please build your business schedule around your children, and not the other way around.

Trust me, I know what you are trying to do, you are trying to build a business for their future.
I am a father, I get it, but your kids won't understand that, and they will only see you not spending time with them, and sitting behind a computer, which at this time to them appears to be more important than them. Don't do that. You will regret it.

I've managed to bring my work day down to 1 hour max. (If I choose to do actual "work"). But that's because even though I have run my own business for well over a decade, I do not operate it by myself. This is all possible for you as well, but it sounds like you need some mentoring, and or some restructuring of your business.

I see some great comments and suggestions here already from some knowledgeable folks, and I hope I was able to make a dent in your thinking as well.

Just remember, family, kids and friends are the most important things in your life, besides your health.

I disagree with this.... if 95% of your website traffic, sales, and customers came from paid advertising... you could "get your life back". But if you're doing free marketing strategies all day, sure... it could literally take you HOURS to finish everything - and have limited amounts of time with family and friends.

But put heavy money into paid advertising and get converting traffic on autopilot... you'll get your life back really quickly. So for all the money that you make with free marketing, invest into paid advertising to gain some leverage.

It is just a matter of proper time management. Because of too many distractions around surfing the web, sometimes you are led astray. Just focus on your tasks and work within your desired time-frame. Keeping in touch with friends can help maintain your social status. But the biggest challenge is physical health. If you do fail to exercise, you are increasing the health risks associated with sitting down on your desk for several hours in a day.

I'm a pretty focused person, so distractions while working from home have never been a problem for me. I always work with my favorite radio station tuned in and it's never kept me away from the task at hand.

My main complain about working from home has always been the social aspect of it, or the lack of it to be more accurate. When I'm knee-deep into a project, I can easily spend days without stepping out of the house and without truly speaking to anyone.

Yes, if you work at home you may get lonely but I would recommend to exercise in a gym and go out on weekends and this will reduce the amount of anti-social interactions

One of the things we can do is set up an office and have 2-4 people around us working for us or at least share an office with a friend who may be doing something entirely different, just to get out of the house and have a chance to meet people everyday as normal humans would do.

Working from home is definitely not so easy due to disturbances caused by babies,wife and other family members or friends ,i accept that .But don't you think it saves a lot of time also like travelling to office ,preparing yourself for office and unwanted hurdles that may destroy your time unnecessarily.

Working from home gives you pleasure of being with your family.Family members really supports you in your work ,just make them aware of your working.I also work from home and have a good workload every week but due to support of my family it became very easier for me.To relax your eyes just watch your babies activities they will keep you relxed and fresh fo whole day

I would say socializing with people ( not family or friends ) but people who you usually meet every day when you go to the office.

As many people have said -- managing your time is crucial when it comes to internet marketing. Some great ways to become more productive are..

- Treat your online job as a regular job -- spend around 8 hours a day working with a lunch break and a couple of breaks as well in there, then when it is over get up and spend time with your family.

- Before each day starts, make a to do list -- with the most important activities at the very beginning ( or when you have the most energy in the day) You want these activities to be revenue activities that will help you make more money like driving traffic, writing follow up emails, or social marketing.

- If you do not want to work 8 hour straight set yourself 30 min to 1 hour work periods with no distractions at all, take a 15 minute break, then repeat this several times a day.

- Invest in paid traffic. While free traffic is good to come by -- it can be very time consuming. By mastering 1 paid traffic method you can eliminate hours of marketing and free up more time in your day.

- Learn how to leverage your free marketing methods. This can be video marketing, article marketing, or social media. With video you can create videos then once ranked will continue to bring you traffic. With social media you can invest in growing your fan page, then from there create amazing post that will engage your audience and bring visitors and prospects viraly.

- Once last tip that will help you is after each hour you spend your time working -- write down exactly how much work you got done, and how much you wasted doing something else.

Believe it or not people mistake being busy with working. If you truly put your mind to it -- I bet you could get the same amount of work your doing now done in half the time if you just eliminate every distraction on the computer and off the computer.

Hope these tips will help you

We run an eBay business from home and it gives us plenty of time. What used to bog us down was posting the products. Now we have employed a mum and she comes in a packs the items (approx 100 per day) and also delivers them to the post office). Automation like this is the key. We now work less than 1 hour a day. When ever you are stuck with something, just grab a book and learn how to solve it.

If you do eBay, I would highly recommend "Million Dollar eBay Business From Home" by Neil Waterhouse

Most people are talking about time management and productivity here, which are important topics of course. However, when I started the thread, the main thing I had in mind was about socializing (or lack of it) when you are in this business. I don't see much comments on that. I would like to know what others feel or experience in this area when they are too much involved in IM business.

In my opinion do not spend that much time in time wasters.

Believe me, concentrate in moving your business forward. I rather spend my time building better ways to improve my business, having quality time and enjoy life than amassing post count and chasing the next shining object.

I've bee online since 2009, when I joined this forum and as my post count may attest, I rather spend my time in productive things and looking for ways to make my business move forward instead of chasing signature links in hope of finding the "next best thing".

Tonight is one of those rare occasions that i post something. I did 2 posts and I am better going back to the productive time, so, good night to all my fellow Warriors !!!

Foreigner

I believe as far as you're making money then you have all the energy to balance the drawbacks and feel good about everything around you. Obviously, sometimes it's hard sometimes it's not. However, when you're facing problems making money you're restless at times.

I think Anwar you need time management. Yes distraction, isolation, health care are some of the factors that most of the people face while working from home. I too work from home and I try to maintain certain time to complete my task. You need to set your working hours in advance so that you as well as your family know that when you will be start working. I think you know better how to accomplish your day job.

Lol, I was thinking the same thing when I read your thread title op. When I'm not doing Nursing I am home on the computer, sometimes I forget to eat and like now I should be in bed. I need comfort talk. How bout those boys, you know what I mean.

Some people can get that from facebook. You can't let out a beer fart on facebook and make your friends scramble. Just not the same thing man.

Your biggest challange is that you manage your time properly, keep your family and friends aside while working and similarly put the work aside when you are with family.

There is no disadvantage in working from home, you don't want distractions you can make a seperate room close the door and lock it from the inside, that's what I do to handle with distractions

Set time aside to spend with your kids. Then make sure it is quality time. If you don't set time aside then you will begrudge the time they are taking up when you could be working.

For me, it has to be the distractions, but I'm managing that quite well (perhaps because I really like the work that I do). The other thing is that sometimes I work all day and evening. As there is no specific time when I leave the office, it's quite easy to get sucked into it and work really long hours. Usually I don't mind, but there definitely is a point in having some free time as well.

In the past week, I noticed a strange thing. Earlier, I would try to work everyday but found myself doing a lot of activities that were a waste of time. I would struggle to force myself to quit these activities and work on the important ones. Of course, if I had some pending orders of clients (as I provide linkbuilding services), I would do them but at other times, I would just waste my time on the internet.

So, what I did last week was, just as an experiment, decided to work hard one day and take a break the next day. On my off-day, I allowed myself the liberty to do as I pleased. If I wanted to work then I could do so and if I wanted to indulge in other activities like browsing forums, reading reports, spending time on social sites or whatever, I could do so.

I found that when I allowed myself offdays, my productivity on the other days improved dramatically. Now, this has just been a few days, so the results are not conclusive in any way. But I would like to ask people here, why this could be happening? In the past 7-10 days, my overall productivity for the week has been much more than previously even though I had lot of offdays.

I strongly agree with you about its cons. I know you may have some less social interaction while your job is at home sitting at the computer, but this is the reality, you know? If we don't have a chance that a certain company may hire you, work at home online is the best way to go. But for me, even though my main business is more on the internet, I spend my free time interacting with my friends.

I have a separate home office and I agree with distractions BUT the upside is I see my kids so much growing up that its worth it.

my 2 year old i take breaks and go and spend 15 mins and it refreshes me and reminds me what all this is for

One of the biggest dangers is the relative isolation. Spend enough time around the people in a single niche (prospects, customers and fellow marketers) and you start getting a distorted view of the world.

I've encountered the same thing with people who turn on one of the news networks (especially MSNBC and FoxNews) and never change the channel. Listen to the same POV for long enough, and you start believing that it's the only one.

I also work from home and most people think it's pretty easy and you get to spend time with your family and do a lot of things you usually do while you're at the comforts of your home. However, it takes discipline and time management skills to be able to work and be at home at the same time. Often times, I find myself so comfortable that I forget to focus on work and I usually do unrelated work stuff like spending so much time with my family. Then days before the deadline, I crammed up and spend so much time with work that I don't get to see them for days. It's hard to focus on work when you're at home.
I've read an article about improving you and your remote team's productivity: http://biz30.timedoctor.com/8-ways-y...-of-your-team/
I just think it might help. I always use those tips especially when my focus gets derailed, I go back and read some of those tips.

I don't have any kids, but the thing that kills me about working from home is not having much social contact. In that sense I prefer the hustle and bustle of a "real job", simply because I like chinwagging about absolutely anything. I always go stir-crazy after more than a few hours by myself.

My biggest drawback is being too caught up in online activities & responsibility that I fall back on my real life duties.

I found it very helpful to create a written to-do list/checklist that I can use to keep myself on track. I'm on the WF? Ok, but only for 10-20 minutes. I'm on Facebook? Is it for personal or business? If the former, only 10 minutes.

If you really can't stop yourself, there are some program you can install to block websites FOR you during certain times of the day!

I think the fact that it can isolate you too much from other people at times isn't a good thing. It's so addictive to just sit there getting a ton of stuff done without interacting with people.

To me the most serious drawback is lack of exercise, and a shorter life. Here's one article about that, but there are similar all over the net.

Exercise key to long, happy life (Science Alert)

If a person has an office (sit down) job for 10 years, their risk of colon cancer doubles. It was no better for office workers who did get regular exercise, but a physically active job was much better.

Sitting time associated with increased risk of chronic diseases | Kansas State University | News and Editorial Services

Sounds to me like you have an issue bro... its got nothing to do with internet marketing...

Either you need to get an office which is separate from your home where you go to at a certain time and leave at a certain time or you need to put some basic rules in place at home.

Example:

wake up 7am
coffee breakfast and excercise before 9am
930am work
break at 11am
work again at 12pm
stop working at 3pm, thats it... get of the pc and go enjoy your life bra!

at the beginning stages yes your social life will suffer a bit because you are working hard to build an online business but something has to give you can't get what you want and see success and expect everything to go smoothly

i spent insane amount of hours on my comp for the first few of years while working full time too

i have put in the hard work at the start and that's why i have been able to spend just a couple of hours per day working over this summer

what you have to think about is how bad you want to succeed

if you are more worried about still going out socializing than you are succeeding with your business then you are perhaps in the wrong business

it won't always be like this as long as you work on the right things but you do have to put the work in at the start and sometimes for a few years before you are able to relax a lot more and be able to start spending more time with family and friends again

this is what happened to me but you just have to keep your head down and keep pushing forward

paul

great points about exercise, been online fulltime since the 90s, exercise helps a lot

i just got back from speaking at an industry conference, I always realize that seeing 'real people' in person is quite unique, when you've spent years mostly in front of computer screens... it feels odd to see actual humans instead of internet screens, and a welcome change of pace.

i always say I feel like "Neo" from the 'matrix', being parked in front of computers, then seeing real people up close in person, is a big shift

so getting involved in some local community (or professional group, like Chamber of Commerce or Toastmasters) is a good thing to add to the calendar, to be around other people

My biggest problems with this are lack of social interaction and lack of drive to get things done as I would have if I had a boss breathing down my kneck.