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Lonely
Working At Home:
You Miss Your Co-Workers
by Jeff Cohen
Remember your co-workers? Those annoying people
you were forced to share an office with -- some of them friends,
but most of them insufferable. If you're anything like me,
one of reasons for starting a home business was to get away
from these people. And yet, when you do work at home all day,
every day, you may find that you start to miss that kind of
companionship, and feel more than a little lonely.
All Alone
Picture the scene. You get up for another day of work. Your
husband or wife has already left, since they have to get up
earlier to commute to their job. Your children are at school.
All the neighbors are at work. Your house feels deserted, and
your neighborhood feels like a ghost town.
It's all too easy to become enormously demotivated in this
situation, and to begin to feel like your work is pointless.
Worse, when you get stuck or something bad happens, you have
nobody to turn to. At work, you were all in it together, but
now it's just you, out on your own.
Even if you don't feel like it's affecting you, the lack of
human interaction could be causing you quite a few problems.
Ask yourself honestly if you've been more irritable than usual
recently, found yourself lacking in energy, or felt upset or
sad without being able to figure out the reason why. If you
have, then it could be related to home-worker loneliness.
The Power of the Web
Since you've presumably got a computer and Internet access
on your office computer, you might find it worthwhile to get
on a search engine and find a few forums for your industry,
especially ones dedicated to people who run home businesses.
You might think what you do is too obscure, but it's a big
web out there.
Finding friends on web forums can be good for replacing the
lost interaction with co-workers. More than that, it can offer
you a good outlet for your frustrations and problems. Many
of the people you're talking to will have been through the
same thing themselves, and will be more than happy to sympathize
with you and offer advice.
There's only one thing to be careful of, though: don't let
chatting about everything and nothing on the web interrupt
your work. Give yourself a certain amount of time each day
to talk to your newfound 'colleagues', and don't go over it.
You don't want to be sitting there pressing 'Refresh' on a
long discussion when you should be getting some work done,
do you?
Get to Know Your Clients
Here's a good way to turn your loneliness into an advantage:
make your clients your friends! The customers that will be
the most loyal to you are the ones that trust you and know
you, and going to meet with them sometimes as a friend can
be rewarding on both a personal and a business level.
Associations, Groups and Societies
If you look, you might be surprised at how many things there
are out there that you could join. Perhaps your area has a
Homeworkers' Society, or an association for your industry that
holds regular meetings? Go along, and you could find some new
friends, as well as some good business contacts. Two or three
groups should be enough.
Go to a Coffee Place Sometimes
You've seen those people who seem to be doing work in Starbucks,
right? Well, they've figured out something valuable -- being
at home alone all day sends you crazy, and it's nice to get
away sometimes and have some coffee while you work. Over time,
you'll even become a regular, and people there will start getting
to know you.
Use Your Breaks to Contact People
Most people have a list a mile long of friends and family
that they've been meaning to get in touch with for ages, but
never seem to have the chance. A great thing to do can be to
make a big list of all these people, and then phone or email
one of them each week, in one of your breaks. Not only does
this fight loneliness, but it's also a plain fun and nice thing
to do.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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