When you work at home, you don’t get sick leave

Now, back to our regular programming…

For better or worse, working at home changes many rules in the workplace environment.

Sure, you can call in to a client and tell them you are too sick, or too contagious, to show up for a meeting, but the work still has to be done on schedule and in most cases you don’t have anyone to turn over the tasks to.

It is a rare self-employed consultant who can turn to a family member and ask, "Can you flesh out this project schedule while I get a few hours of sleep?" You may be able to get a little proofreading, or a beverage of choice, but that’s as far as it goes.

On the other hand, you can work away until your head fills up and your wastebasket is full of used tissues, then knock off for a few hours of sleep until you are ready to work again and nobody is going to complain that you slacking.

I have been doing this routine for the last 24 hours and while it seems arduous, it allows me to keep producing efficiently, if not consistently.

I also find that the enforced breaks make me look at the problems very carefully and I try to work smarter, rather than harder. When I don’t have the stamina for a 8-hour design marathon, I try to see if I can break the task into more manageable pieces.

Most of the time, I can.