Roughly twelve years ago, I moved my office home from my “dream” office; that was until my dream office became my nightmare. I hated to leave it; there was nothing like it in Fort Lauderdale.

Located on the swanky Las Olas Boulevard, it looked like it belonged in the Back Bay area of Boston or Soho in New York. Two picture windows overlooking the street, high ceilings, and the original hardwood floors that were fifty years old when I first moved in.

With a downturn in the economy and space available at home for an office, the realization came that I needed to close that chapter of my business life and start a new one. With the move and set-up complete, I worried about how I was going to make this work. I had read stories of how wonderful it was to go to work in your pajamas and that you could work whenever you wanted to. Deep down, I knew neither one of those options was good for my attention span, which is the size of a nat.

From day one here are the rules I set up:

1. I never went to the office in my pajamas. I dressed as I did when I drove to the office.
2. Office hours remained the same nine to five.
3. I stayed in the office until noon when I broke for lunch.
4. After lunch, I worked until five.

With those rules well in place, the transition went great. In eight short years, it has become surprisingly easy to go to the office in my pajamas, work for a couple of hours, and then get dressed for the office. I now stop whenever I want, run errands, or later in the day stop and make plans to go back after dinner.

Here’s how the changes are working for me now:

1. The work I do manage to get done in my pajamas is never the same quality as when dressed for the office. I usually end up redoing what I did.
2. Since my business consists of both print work and website work, at times I do need to go to my printer, I don’t need to go to the grocery store at 10:30 am.
3. Rarely, if ever do I go back to the office after dinner.

Currently, I’m out of town, but when I get back, I will be going back to my original rules.

Are you new to working at home, do you need some help in getting things set up?

Let’s chat.