Dealing with Interruptions
Today was President's Day here in the US. My 9 year old daughter was home from school. My roommate, who is also a single Mom, was home from work, with her 1 year old daughter. The day began with me getting about a paragraph done on a project before the phone rang, asking for someone named Susan--no Susan's here. I got another paragraph before my roommate's mother calls, wanting something or another.
My daughter and the baby come up to tug on me and ask for things as I'm attempting to juggle a notebook, the keyboard, and an old marketing PDF that I'm revising for a client. As breakfast gets going, the mother and her two young children show up at the house. My daughter wants to know if her friend can stay and play--she can, because I have the suspicion that Barbies with the friend is going to win Mom a little bit of peace.
Indeed, I finished project #1.
Then I had to make a phone call myself, and then I started fooling around with my Stamps.com program, only to discover my printer wasn't working. That required rounding up the whole crew for an hour long trip to Wal-mart after a frantic search for my purse, which I had carefully put away the day before. Unable to remember putting it away where it belonged, I went to the usual suspects--places like under the couch or slung under someone's discarded coat.
Of course, you can never get just one thing at Walmart. We went in with a list. Of course, upon coming home we discovered that the printer cartridges which were, for me, the primary purpose of the whole trip did not make it home with us. That meant a trip back to the Big W to pick up the bag. Fortunately my roommate was willing to put aside her hastily acquired fast food (the trip after the Walmart trip) to go pick it up for me.
I squeezed in about a page on project #2. Then I started fighting the printer. You haven't learned frustration till you have an HP Deskjet D1520 tell you that you do not have ink after putting brand new cartridges in. After three hours of messing with it some part pops out with a spring. I was ready to throw it through the wall before discovering that Walmart had wireless printers on sale for like $60, less than I'd bought the old piece of crap printer for. I ordered one and went back to Project #2.
I got most of that done before my daughter threw a massive temper tantrum. Then it was time for rehearsal. Ahh, yes, you see, I'm Edith Zuckerman in our community production of Charlotte's Web. My daughter, who had desperately wanted to be Fern, got beat out of Fern in favor of being one of Charlotte's dancing children--so she informed me that she hated being a stupid spider and didn't want to go to rehearsal. I took the 30 minute drive on my own.
It was our first stage rehearsal, which meant blocking issues and lots of interruptions, and a rehearsal that ran thirty minutes past its usual time. I stepped out into the snow storm and drove 45 miles per hour in the 70 zone to get home in one piece where I completed Project #2. I dutifully scratched Project #3 off of the list and tossed it onto my Tuesday list, then came on to this one, which was Project #4 and which, given the progress I'm having here at 10:40 PM EST, will surely get done. Tomorrow is, blessedly, a school day.
The work from home lifestyle! It's full of flexibility and freedom, but sometimes it means you have an awful hard time doing the work that gets the bills paid. The picture I've given you doesn't even begin to describe the noise level. I do not have a cushy tax deductible home office with a door I can close. I have a desk in the living room, with people wanting to watch television or play video games or simply live in the house directly behind me. If you want to work from home, you have to accept that as part of your reality and work with it.
Of course, it's not really any different from working at an office, because at an office the coworkers are always chatting, or wanting things from you. The boss wants things from you. The phone rings. A lot. The difference is, however, is that you get paid at the end of the day no matter what if you're working in an office. When you're in business for yourself, you get paid when you deliver the goods, make the sale, do the project or generate the click. If you're out shopping, partying, dealing with kids, talking to your best friend on the phone, playing Zoo World on Facebook, pausing to watch your favorite movie, wandering around on Twitter, going to Walmart--even for office supplies--or any number of other things, you're not going to make money. Any money. At all.
So how do you deal with interruptions? You decide what you're going to accomplish for the day. You decide what MUST be accomplished that day and what can be thrown to the next day of the week if you really and truly have to let it sit for a moment. You don't set yourself hours, you set yourself tasks. The days of hours are done. They're gone. I could have told myself that I worked from 10 am this morning to 6 pm this evening, but it would have been a lie. I maybe got 45 minutes of real work done during that time. I do set office hours, but those office hours are simply the times I encourage my clients to call me, as opposed to say, two in the morning or midnight or on a Sunday.
Only the marketers tell you this will be easy, sunshine and roses, beaches and fast cars.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely.
I didn't have to scramble for a sitter because my child was off for President's day. I got a huge amount of hugs and kisses and smiles. I might have stressed a bit, but I never worried I'd lose my livelihood or source of income as a result of all of these events, because I make my own livelihood. I make my own income source. I constantly seek out a variety of clients, which means a variety of income streams. When one dries up, there are more to be found.
At one point, I interrupted myself. I wrote down everything I was grateful for.
My work from home job was at the top of the
list.
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