Hey mamas. I'm looking for some ideas.
I work in a creative field. Some of my hours are WAH, some are WOH, and lately my hours have ranged between 10 and 30 weekly. I know it's a wide range. That's actually something I like. I am "balancing" the job with a prett intensive at-home life, including two children, dh who travels a lot for work (gone for a month right now) and a 10-acre farm with livestock. There's a lot of variety in my professional work. Some projects go on for months while others take just an hour or two. It's an active, stimulating, usually fun job.
Right now, my WOH tools are a laptop with VPN access and my personal cell phone. I don't use the phone much, so I always have plenty of minutes for when I need it. I have teleconferenced by phone from home and had many phone convos with boss/colleagues. My email access is limited to my laptop, so I can only check when actually in my house. Since my colleagues prefer email to phone, this means sometimes I don't get messages in a timely way, because I am in the barn or field or garden and a job comes up...and rather than call me on my cell (which I always carry with me), a project mgr may send an email, to which I can't reply until I am back in the house.
OK. You get the point.
My question for those of you who work at home or in a mobile office, tell me about how this works for you. How do you like your smartphone? What smartphone do you use? Has it effectively bridged that gap and made you as accessible as your work needs? How has this negatively impacted your non-work life? What is your job, and how effectively could you perform without your smartphone?
I am trying to envision an existence where I am not always worried that I am missing something because I won't be near my laptop for another 3 hours, or whatever. Or that I spend too much time too close to the laptop and don't get anything else done because I am waiting for contact from the office.
I work in a creative field. Some of my hours are WAH, some are WOH, and lately my hours have ranged between 10 and 30 weekly. I know it's a wide range. That's actually something I like. I am "balancing" the job with a prett intensive at-home life, including two children, dh who travels a lot for work (gone for a month right now) and a 10-acre farm with livestock. There's a lot of variety in my professional work. Some projects go on for months while others take just an hour or two. It's an active, stimulating, usually fun job.
Right now, my WOH tools are a laptop with VPN access and my personal cell phone. I don't use the phone much, so I always have plenty of minutes for when I need it. I have teleconferenced by phone from home and had many phone convos with boss/colleagues. My email access is limited to my laptop, so I can only check when actually in my house. Since my colleagues prefer email to phone, this means sometimes I don't get messages in a timely way, because I am in the barn or field or garden and a job comes up...and rather than call me on my cell (which I always carry with me), a project mgr may send an email, to which I can't reply until I am back in the house.
OK. You get the point.
My question for those of you who work at home or in a mobile office, tell me about how this works for you. How do you like your smartphone? What smartphone do you use? Has it effectively bridged that gap and made you as accessible as your work needs? How has this negatively impacted your non-work life? What is your job, and how effectively could you perform without your smartphone?
I am trying to envision an existence where I am not always worried that I am missing something because I won't be near my laptop for another 3 hours, or whatever. Or that I spend too much time too close to the laptop and don't get anything else done because I am waiting for contact from the office.
as I have my cell number forward to home when I am unreachable (out of service) and check my email on my laptop at home. I have a wireless router so I'm not physically stuck in the office (but I can totally understand not wanting to take your laptop in the barn or the garden).
maybe it's just because I hate my job...)
