Tips for Your Home Office (Enhancing Your Life at Home)

Lively firsthand advice for creating the most comfortable, professional, and productive home-office environment possible. In a friendly tips format, Gould offers ideas for managing time and work flow, choosing and using office equipment, easing the transition from office to home work, and more.

Being your own boss isn't all beer and skittles. As Meredith Gould says, "Go ahead and skip through your home shouting, 'Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last,' but don't get too carried away." Gould knows–from experience–that home workers often put in as many, if not more, hours than typical office workers, and that the environment they create for themselves must allow them to function as professionals, no matter what kind of business they're conducting. To that end, she's put together a creative, detailed guide to creating that environment, from the carpet, lighting, and setup of the office furniture to setting up a calendar system for billing clients. It covers a gazillion things you might not have thought of: how to improve the office air quality, how and when to send press releases, when to hire a consultant, making contacts through professional organizations, and when not to work in your bunny slippers. Even with a few minor peculiarities of organization (there's a useful chapter on planning ahead for giving up your office job, but it's oddly located in the middle of the book), this is one book no home office should be without. –Barrie Trinkle