Home Office Stress

I have been working from a home office for quite a few years now. I forget how challenging it can be when one first starts working from home. Every once in a while I talk with someone who has just started working from home and finding it very difficult. It is especially difficult if you left a corporate job where you were surrounded by colleagues all the time. You started at a certain time, had breaks at specified times, went to lunch with friends and left the office at a certain to go home. Now suddenly you don't even have to get dressed to go to work. The schedule change and the lack of interaction with other employees can be very hard on some people. I transitioned a little easier than most because I had a corporate job with irregular hours and I traveled a lot so I was not the office on a regular basis. Even so, my biggest hurdle when I started working from home was ending work at a reasonable hour every day. I felt I had to keep working as I now had my own business and needed to work longer hours to make it a success. I eventually hired a business coach to help me as I was exhausted and starting to resent my home office. I couldn't leave the office and go home! My coach was a life saver and gave me some great tools to regain some control over my time again. The first and most important tool was to stick to a scheduled start time and end time as much as possible. The second tool that worked for me was making a short list at the end of the day of the items I didn't get to but will work on tomorrow. Everything isn't always going to get done everyday and that was hard for me to accept. I also had to leave my desk for lunch and at least once a week go out for lunch, even if it was by myself. I found out how important it was for me to get out and change the scenery around me. Years later I still use these tools and enjoy working from my home office. I would be hard pressed to go back to a corporate nine to five career. I truly enjoy the freedom of my home office.