Sometimes, home-based professionals who do all or some of their work during the weekend may find themselves wondering how many other people do the same. According to a study that was done in 2010, approximately thirty five percent of all people who are employed, whether they work from home or outside of the home, work at least some weekend hours. The amount of time that people spent working on weekend days was less than that spent during the week. According to that same study, people worked an average of 7.9 hours per week day that they worked, but only worked an average of 5.5 hours on each weekend day. Also, people who do all or part of their work from home were far more likely to be logging weekend work hours. Sixty four percent of home based workers were working on the weekends, compared to nineteen percent of people who do not do any of their work from home.
While the numbers show that you are not alone when it comes to working on the weekend although it can sometimes feel that way, especially if your friends and your spouse have schedules that do not include weekend work hours. Depending upon your family’s schedule and whether working on the weekends bothers you, you may be able to find a way to work more during the week so that you can work less on weekends. Of course, it is entirely possible that for your family, weekend days are just like any other days and the possibility of you, your spouse, or both working one or both weekend days is nothing out of the ordinary. That is what it is like at my house – my husband works in the restaurant industry, an industry in which almost everyone must work at least some of each weekend on a regular basis. I work from home and I work a few hours almost every day, weekend or not, when our son is asleep. It really does not bother us that we work on the weekends. My husband still has two days off each week, and I try to work less on those days so that we can all spend some time together doing family activities. If you are new to working at home and you are missing your work-free weekends, do not despair. Take a closer look at your work schedule – hopefully you will see that the increased amount of control that you have over how you use your time has resulted in more time available to do the things that you want to do, even if it is not crammed into two consecutive days.
Photo by gracey on morguefile.com.