Jobs @ Career Consulting Limited

Return to career-consulting-limited.com
Managing
People
Managing Your Career
CV Examples
Coaching
Cover Letter Examples
Pre-Employment Tests


The Telecommuting Tightrope


For many of us, telecommuting seems like the ideal situation. You wake up, shuffle over to your home office, work at your own pace. You take a break when it suits you, you end your day when you're ready to. You can rearrange your work schedule to fit around your personal life.

Or can you?

What motivates most people to seek telecommuting is the need for a balance between work and play. Ironically, it's often this desire for balance that leads people to the realization that telecommuting is not for them.

Take Meg Rottman. Now the President of her own Public Relations company, StylePR, Meg once thought that telecommuting was the perfect solution.

At the time, she was working as a Fashion Editor for a company located in New York. Since she was on the West Coast, and her job didn't require her presence in an office, she felt it was a natural fit to work from home.

"At first, it seemed like a great opportunity," says Meg. "Ultimately, I found that I didn't have 'work time' and 'play time'. It morphed into just 'time'".

"I found that there was no beginning or ending to my day. And there was no time off. I would jump out of bed in the morning with an idea and go directly to the computer. And then, often I would still be typing at 11:00 at night. It was almost like being on call. I wanted my time to be more compartmentalized".

This is a common side effect of working from home. It takes no small amount of discipline to structure your day- and stick to it. The funny thing is, having the ability to take a break and do other things in the middle of the workday is the reason many people want to telecommute in the first place.

Meg realized this. "If you really schedule your day, then how can you justify taking a walk, or putting a roast in? You can't," she says. "Maybe you're giving up what made working at home so great to begin with."

It wasn't all bad though. Meg did discover some things about herself. "I really did not need supervision, I was completely self-motivated. The surprising thing was that I worked more".

Not surprising is the fact that Meg now owns her own company. "[Telecommuting] definitely gave me the feeling that I was already working for myself, so why not do that?" she says. "Yes I have to drive to my office now, but it is easier for me to separate work and home and create a more balanced life."

Sometimes, things just aren't what you thought they'd be- and sometimes that's a good thing.

--------------------------------

Sharon Davis is the Mom to two girls, the owner of 2Work-At-Home.Com, Work At Home Articles.net and the Editor of the site's monthly ezine, America's Home. In her spare time she reminisces about what it was like to have spare time.

This article may be reproduced providing it is published in it's entirety, including the author's bio. For a text version via autoresponder, send a blank email to tightrope@sendfree.com


MORE RESOURCES:



Careers | Career Opportunities  West Virginia University






Jobs  City of Rochester (.gov)

Careers at TWU  Texas Woman's University








City of Tampa Careers  City of Tampa

Job Seekers  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign


Nursing jobs  VA.gov Home | Veterans Affairs




Careers  Washington State University




Working for ICE  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Newsroom



UF Health Careers  UF Health - University of Florida Health




Careers at Prairie View A&M University  Prairie View A&M University

Job Search Results  UnitedHealth Group

UN COMMON CAREERS  VCU Health

Work With Us  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Career Opportunities  Gilead Sciences

Careers  Medline




Jobs and internships  Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Job Opportunities  Bellevue School District

How to Apply  FEMA



Careers  Micron

Careers at Discovery Education  Discovery Education





Careers  KPMG

Join our team  FHI 360


Internship Opportunities | Careers  Boston Consulting Group



Careers in  A&O Shearman

Work At Chess.com  Chess.com

Students and graduates  JPMorgan Chase

Career Paths  FEMA

Careers at Balfour Beatty  Balfour Beatty

Highest-Paying Engineering Careers in 2024  University of North Dakota






Mental health at work  World Health Organization



Why Employees Quit  HBR.org Daily

JobFeed  NSW Department of Education


Two unis walking the career path alongside graduates  The Australian Financial Review



Careers  Turner & Townsend

Current opportunities  Turner & Townsend




Careers  City of Norfolk (.gov)



Jobs  Energy.gov

Careers at King County  King County


> Careers > Job-listings  National Reconnaissance Office

Employment Opportunities  Unity Health Toronto

Jobs  Dublin City University

Careers  City of Somerville

Careers  UTSA Today

Careers at USI  University of Southern Indiana

Careers with the City of London  City of London, Ontario

Need More Information?
Site Home | Site Map | Links | Contact Us | Privacy Policy
© Career Consulting Limited.com 2011

tumblr visit counter