When I decided that I wanted to work from home at least one day a week, I did not prepare a pitch.  I barged into my manager’s office one day and simply blurted out that I was going to work from home every Friday.  While my manager did agree that having an established day in which I was home was acceptable, I would not recommend this approach.   My tactic was unprofessional and while it did work to get me what I wanted, it most likely won’t work for you. 

The best thing to do is to be prepared.  The power of information is in your favor when it comes to working from home.  In order to earn that Telecommuting badge, you must prepare a thoughtful and comprehensive proposal.

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I’ve been a working adult for what … 20 years, now? … and for every one of those twenty years, I’ve been in search for the perfect organization system.  I have tried them all:  Filofaxes and Palm Pilots, Day Runners and Blackberrys, nice pristine legal pads and Outlook — and yet none of them are just right.  The reasons are varied:

– I hate electronic task managers, because I like actually writing down to-do lists, and I adore the self-satisfied feeling of actually dragging my pen across the page, marking out an item completed.

– I really love calendar functions that allow for alarms, so that when I’m lost in the middle of a project, my PDA will actually buzz or sound a tone alerting me that I need to get ready for a meeting.

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People always tell me how lucky I am that I have the opportunity to work from home.  And I agree, for the most part.  But working from home is not sunshine, rainbows, and butterflies.  I’ve had to re-learn working in a virtual environment.  It’s a different ball game.  While I do love getting to fold a load of laundry while on a conference call, my life can be totally unbalanced while I work from home.  And I’ve seen many a co-worker crash and burn when moving from the corporate office to the home office.

You may have thought of your office as distracting with water cooler conversations, idle hallway chit-chat, and that one person who always manages to burn the popcorn in the breakroom microwave.  But just wait until you are at home with a whole new set of distractions.

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Last Thursday morning, my husband and I woke up and immediately turned on the local news. “Mandatory evacuations have been called for Galveston, and southern portions of Harris County.” We looked at each other.  Even though our Houston neighbourhood wasn’t in the south of Harris County, we knew that Hurricane Ike was forecast to be a doozy.  “We should leave now,” I said.  “Because if they decided to evacuate any more areas than those, I seriously don’t want to be stuck on the freeway for hours trying to get out of town.”
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Turkey Sloppy Joes

My spouse is a typical “meat and potatoes” guy.  Eating red meat isn’t a healthy option every night so I’ve learned to adapt meals that satisfy his love of meat.  The trick?  I use ground turkey instead of ground beef.  With a flavorful sauce, the meat-lovers in your family will never know the difference.

 I serve this meal with a hearty green salad, carrots and dip (for my carrot loving son), and store-bought, oven-baked fries.  A healthy meal that goes from pan to plate in 20 minutes. 
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For about 95% of my childhood, my father was an executive at a large Fortune 500 company.  He was sort of the stereotypical corporate dad:  he left in his suit and tie every morning, returned in the evening, often just barely making it home in time for the dinner my mom prepared for our family.  He took long business trips to far away places.  He did this every day until he retired, eight years ago.

And he loved every minute of it.

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It’s moving day here at my office.  Due to recent acquisitions and a real estate consolidation, the building that I currently work in has been sold.  Everyone that works in the office park is moving to another office park about 5 miles down the road.  It’s no big deal to me.  Work is work.  When you’ve worked in as many offices as I have, you start the get the feeling that all offices were created equal. 

Sure some may have an open floor plan.  Some may have a ping-pong table.  Some may have a great cafeteria.  But I all really need to be productive is three things: the breakroom, the restroom, and the printer. 

Yesterday as I nonchalantly packed up my single box of stuff, I walked around the floor to check in on my office mates.  I was shocked to see how much stuff people were carting around with them.  One person had 8 boxes of stuff that they were bringing with them.  He had nick-nacks galore, binders and papers that even he admitted he didn’t know what for, enough office supplies to last at least a year, and so much more.  The guy looked so stressed that he wouldn’t have enough time to finish packing before we all had to be out of the office at 5pm.   When he asked how I was coming along, I laughed a little and said,

“I’m done.  I have a firm one-box rule.  I only keep enough stuff at the office that could fill a single box.”

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Recently, I met a woman who ran her own company.  We totally hit it off — I found her smart, affable, and the type of person who I’d love to call a friend.

As we spoke, she mentioned that she was a member of a networking lunch group.  "You should definitely come!"  she gushed.  "It’s great — we’re a bunch of professional working women, some of of parents, some of us not, and we make a point to meet for lunch every week.  Just come if you can — it’s great to have people to talk with, vent to, and bounce ideas off of every week who understand what you’re facing."

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