Most people are selfish when it comes to their problems, and no matter how nice you are explaining that you are working, they don’t feel like they’re intruding.

I keep regular hours, at least starting time, and work into the night quite a bit. So, it’s difficult to get me when I’m not working.

All part of being self-employed, I guess.

I appreciate your input as always.

Joe

For people who could discipline themselves to focus on each task one at a time, well, I think they might not have so many issues regarding distraction.

Sometimes you just have to let people know that even though you might be working at home, you do have regular work hours too

My friend did get the joke, but I had to explain it… LOL

I’m sure you know how difficult it is to say no to friends and family, but I agree, you need to differenciate between work and home.

That is more difficult than most people realize because, as you said, a lot of self-employed people don’t separate their time well enough.

I agree with your statement about friends, wives and business. You can always start another business, but sometimes you can’t repair a ruptured relationship.

As always, your comment hit home.

Joe

That’s funny…. (although maybe not to him)

I think it helps to treat your time in your home office just as you would as if you were working for someone else. In a very real way it is not your time, it belongs to your business, and you have an obligation to be there, undistracted. If you were working for a company and your friend called you wouldn’t have a problem saying “Hey, I can’t do this right now, I’ll call you after work”.

The problem comes in when you don’t clearly differentiate between work-time and personal-time. It’s a matter of clearly communicating to others that this is business, and that some things need to wait until after business hours.

Of course, that makes the assumption that you’re creating “after business hours” for yourself, which many self-employed people do not. Life becomes a jumble of personal and business time all mixed together, with no clear delineation between the two. That’s a big problem, for you and your friends and your family.

The final thing I’ll say is that good friends (and wives) can be hard to come by. No business is worth losing either one of them. Ever.

That out of the way, I understand that it’s hard to tell someone that you are actually working after they have seen you play games etc on the computer.

Once they actually see the effort you put in, and there is some reward (read money), they will come around. Sometimes it takes a little while, but if they understand YOU, they will be supportive.

Joe