We’ve chatted before about the struggles we home-business folk have with keeping reasonable work hours—how we often find ourselves working through weekends and into the wee hours of the morning. But, part of the reason we work too many odd hours might be that we haven’t let our clients, customers, friends, and family members know exactly WHEN our work hours are.
I’m the first person to admit that I don’t want to be pinned down or hemmed in. I really like to have some flexibility in my schedule and I’m certain that’s one of my motivators in working for myself. However, I also know that I learned from experience that setting some reasonable work hours and letting everyone know what they were—helped me to put some parameters around my home business, and start to create more balance in my life.
This doesn’t mean that we have to keep REGULAR business hours—the whole 9-5 routine, but if we’d like to work every-other-day, or just mornings, or just afternoons, by letting our customers and other people know when we’re actually “on duty”—we’ll save ourselves some headache and overwork. So, how do we let people know? You can try putting it in your answering machine or voice mail message and including it in your e-mails or on your Web site. A simple message that says: “Office hours are…xyz” is all you need.
Of course, it may take a while for everyone to catch on—especially if you have been available at any hour of the day or have been keeping fairly sporadic, irregular office hours. You can still keep sporadic, irregular hours if you want, but you might be able to control or “train” people to only bother you during your declared “office hours.” This way you can do your other work when you need to and be available for customers and clients during specific hours.