I followed a John Chow post that lead me to the ramblings of some geeks at Geekpreneur.com and one of their posts really caught my attention. “What Working from Home Really Means” posted back in May sometime.

It had me asking myself, what working from home meant to me. I don’t “sleep-in”, I don’t take extended lunch breaks and sit in front of the tv gazing into emptiness (the exception is when there’s a good soccer game on), nor do I do what the “cool” people do and go sip lattes at the Starbucks, while plugged into the virtual world.

Here are some of the things working from home allows me to do…

TRAVEL. I love to travel and so do Caron, Kieana, Tehya and India. I take my laptop with me and all it takes is a couple hrs a day and I get enough work to keep the ship afloat. Some days, it’s just a matter of checking my email and stats. Nothing more than 20 minutes and I’m good to go. We love cruising and most, if not all the newer ships have wireless internet, so I can sit by the pool and flick on the trusty laptop.

I know, you’re probably saying… but that’s not really enjoying a vacation. WRONG! I have to be plugged in, even if for 15 minutes or I’d go crazy. PLUS.. that 1 or 2 hrs I spend checking up on my online business while on vacation, makes me enough money to pay the bills when we get home

BTW, now that I have a virtual assistant there’ll be no need to lug the laptop. But I’ll still need an internet cafe.

FAMILY. I get to participate in our girls life, more than most parents do. Plus on the days Caron is not at work, we get to spend time together. Even if it’s just going to the Costco and getting mad at the people who run into you with their shopping carts.  I knew from day one that I wanted to be in business for myself, but never did I dream that I would be afforded the opportunity to do so in such a flexible way.

Just look at yesterday… We helped organize Tehya’s grad, then went to the actual ceremony (I didn’t have any BOSS for time off) and immediately after that I froze my butt off watching Indy’s team win her soccer game. That’s 3 win in a row now! And when we got home, I help Tehya and Caron pack (well, got the luggage out of the basement) for their trip.

I CAN WALK AWAY! I have the freedom to walk away from my desk and not be asked where I’m going or be afraid of reprisal by the “boss”! If this was a 9-5 office environment, I’d have to sit there in front of that desk and bear it!

I’m sure there are many other things I appreciate about working from home, but those are the main ones that comes to mind.

Leave me your comments and don;t forget to subscribe for the updates (top right of the page).

Before I go I’d just like to say congrats to Tehya, you made you mom, sisters and myself very proud yesterday. Great job on the award and other achievements that were bestowed on you yesterday!

Enjoy your trip!

Hey! Chris here…

Seems my post from earlier today caused a lot of people to write in with concerns. I posted an email I received from someone who was broke, confused and totally giving up, until they started their own business. And I thought it was all legit and something I had to share with my readers.

I’ll post some of the comments I received moments after I made the post later tonight, so everyone get an opportunity to voice their opinion. BTW, I removed the controversial post until I had a chance to do some more research.

Thanks for your understanding, if you’re now getting to the site and expecting to see the original post I made.

I’ve decided to hire a personal assistant to take away some of the work that’s chewing up my time. This is a full telecommute job, so everything is done from your home office. Providing you have the necessary equipment and dedication. As mentioned in previous posts, working from home is not as easy as it may seem.

Full details about this vacant work from home job, can be found at: VIRTUAL ASSISTANT NEEDED!
Please pay attention to everything that’s mentioned in the job post, since I need someone who can pay attention to details and follow through.

Further to my post a couple days ago about “Time Management“, here’s another tip which will see you achieve more in 2008. GET HELP! You may feel that you’re capable of doing everything and most likely you can. Sure you can answer every support email that comes in, sure you can build websites to run mini promotions and I’m sure you can manage all the advertising campaigns you have running. But what is it costing you and your business? Try not to HOG your time doing things which prevents you from “generating cash” activities.

Outsource the mundane things. A virtual assistant or an outsourced employee is skilled in many areas, comes fairly cheap and the majority of them are very hard working and dedicated. This will free-up a lot of your time to concentrate on revenue generating activities.

Thought of the day : Life is like a jar of jalapeños . What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow

It’s often referred to as telecommuting, e-commuting, e-work, telework, and many other terms, but more people are working from home today than in the past – even for larger companies.

Today, upwards of 12 million employees telework more than eight hours per week, up from about six million in 2000, according to Gartner Dataquest.

Mikki Kremer, a human resources resolution consultant for ING, spends 95 percent of her work time at home in Minot with the remaining time spent traveling and attending meetings. Kremer is a full-time employee and has been working at home since October 2004. She joined ING in 2001. Nationwide, ING has 400 employees who work from a home office.

“This (working at home) was something I wanted to do for a number of years,” Kremer said.

Kremer has been interested in working from home since her children have grown. She said that 15 years ago working from home wouldn’t have been an option because her children were still at home.

“You have to be self-focused on the job, and there can’t be distractions in this job,” Kremer said. “I recommend people who work from home to not be the primary (care) giver.”

To read the complete article by CARLA WILLIAMS, please click here.