The Hardest Adjustment To Self Employment

The hardest thing for me about working at home is convincing everybody around me (and myself) that I'm "at the office" during the day and am therefore unavailable to do things you'd normally do if you were sitting around the house all day.<p>So, no, I can't take the car down to the DMV to get the emissions tested at 11. I can't run a bunch of little errands because it's not my day off. I need all 8 of these hours in an unbroken stretch, and if I do it right I won't even find time to stop for lunch. It's tough to communicate that to your partner, especially when she comes home at six to find you in your bathrobe playing Fantastic Contraption (, relaxing after a long productive day, but it probably doesn't look like it.)<p>Like most things, a lot of it comes down to self-discipline. I tend to start the day at 8am with a cup of coffee and a walk up the stairs to the office. As the author says, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of schedule, so long as you remember to take advantage of the upside of running your own business. If the sun is shining at noon, chances are you'll find me out in the hills with a pair of rock boots and a bouldering mat.

<i>"That’s the the thing about schedules: once you have one everyone else needs to, too, preferably as close to yours as possible."</i><p>Quick schedule hack: run your schedule a half hour earlier than everyone else's. Show up for lunch at 11:30 instead of 12. Get to the restaurant at 5:30 instead of 6. View an earlier movie. Get to work a little early.<p>You'll always get preferred seating, preferred parking, and you'll never wait for a meal again :). You may beat traffic in some locales, but I've yet to benefit just from a 30 minute shift.

Speaking of "leveling up" (and EpicWin, from what I can see, is clearly mankind's greatest invention):<p>The new AppointmentReminder site is extremely solid.<p>Can I invest?<p><i>By the way:</i> Get the office.<p>I'm working from home this week too, because it's the first week of middle school for the boy and so the first time he takes the bus.<p>Since the beginning of the year, on a typical week, I actually full-time on product for Matasano, which <i>always</i> feels less productive than being billable --- nothing is more "productive-feeling" than being billable. But this week is different. I'm doing a web pentest for a friend's company, because, well, I like the company. So I'm actually unusually productive this week.<p>But because I'm home, it does not feel that way at all. I feel totally unproductive and lost, despite clear daily evidence to the contrary. It's because I'm not going to the office to boot up my work day.

At 2 in the afternoon yesterday, I hopped in my car and drove 2 hours to the beach. I sat in the sun and gazed out at the ocean while the kids played in the sand. We took a long walk along the beach, did a little window shopping in the local town, then went out to dinner. We watched the sun set behind the perma-cloud spanning the horizon, then drove back home.<p>The worst thing about being self-employed is that I don't do that sort of thing more often. I feel much more pressure to constantly work - even if I'm not being productive. I used to think the hardest thing would be self-motivation, but really I've found the hardest thing is forcing yourself to stop working and take a needed break. <i>(Oh, that and taxes. I hate doing taxes)</i>

<i>Like most people, I have lived an entire lifetime conforming to schedules. They exist like the Greek gods: you didn’t ask for them but they are there, there is no negotiating with them, and prolonged association means you are likely to get your dignity violated by a bovine.</i><p>Once again Patrick nails it, with his usual flair.

I have stopped taking the issue of 'working from home' so seriously. In fact, I find it liberating to have an infinitely flexible schedule. In fact, not having to commute and not having a strict schedule was one of the primary motivations of doing a startup. As long as you are making more sales than what you were originally earning and the sales keep growing, why bother about fixed schedules? I'd love to see some hard research on productivity effects of fixed v/s flexible schedules.

Yeah, it's great setting your own schedule, but it can be brutal too. No one yells at you if you're screwing off, you've got to be your own taskmaster and slavedriver, which isn't always a healthy relationship with yourself.<p>Me, in order to stay productive, I needed to start tracking my time and having daily objectives in order to get anything done. I wrote up something about this if anyone is interested - "The Evolution of My Time/Habit/Life Tracking" - <a href="http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=127" rel="nofollow">http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=127</a>

"But you set your own hours" is one of my least favorite things to hear. That doesn't mean there's less work to do.

Since giving up my previous work as a small business manager/co-owner, I've struggled greatly with this. I go through periods of great productivity, but especially while traveling, it's easy to do nothing for days.<p>I hate schedules, but the structure is valuable.

The greatest thing about being self employed is that it gives you lots of freedom. That's also the worst thing about being self employed.<p>My personal enemy #1 is distractions. I used to be much better at that but the last half year has been pretty horrible.

So, what is your immigration status? I'm pretty sure I couldn't stay in the US, pursuing the kind of business you have, without obtaining a green card by some other means first.

I made the switch after ~10 years of unbroken employment. The biggest feeling I had is explained in <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html</a><p>There's absolutely no way I could do this without getting an office though. Well, an office isn't essential, but somewhere other than my home office is. There's just no way I can get myself into the right mindset to work at home on a consistent basis.