How to juggle an office job and a home-based business

If you play your cards right it is actually surprisingly possible to enjoy the benefits of home working and an office job without having to run yourself into an early grave. There are thousands of people all across the UK making the most of their working week by strategically balancing home and office-based works while, of course, taking home a dual-package of benefits.

The trouble is, those that dive in head-first are largely guaranteed to face either a rocky road or outright failure before anything gets off the ground – forethought is vital.

So with this in mind, here are a few tips that can make all the difference when it comes to making the best of both worlds and reaping the rewards:

Stay true to your interests

It’s tough enough trying to keep up with even a single job that’s not up your street so if you are looking to balance two roles, it’s crucial to ensure that are within your field of interest. And this doesn’t necessarily mean that something you’re good at is automatically a safe bet – if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing you’ll soon find the balancing act comes a cropper.

Conflicting interests

To a reasonable extent at least, you must ensure that the two roles you’re carrying out don’t present conflicts of interests. Not that they have to work 100% harmoniously with each other to the nth degree, but you can’t expect both to run smoothly if there’s any shred of competition or moral conflict going on.

Strict scheduling

For those working two jobs, it can often feel as though the key lies in flexibility and being able to swap and change as you see fit, but it isn’t. Quite the contrary in fact. This is precisely the kind of habit that breeds disorganisation and chaos. As such, it is of paramount importance to come up with strict schedules and working timetables for each role and stick to them like clockwork.

Distractions

Concentrating with extreme focus in a dedicated office workspace is comparatively easy, while some may find it difficult in the home office. This counts double for those working in both environments who need to pay extra close attention to building a distraction-free working environment in both places.

Accept limitations

For all the rewards in the world, there’s nothing more precious than your time and your health. As such, it’s of crucial importance never to forget that even the best of us have our limits and burning the candle at both ends will only ever yield a faster fall. Juggling two jobs is one thing, but juggling two full-time jobs is a different kettle of fish entirely.

Factor in downtime

It’s not enough to just squeeze in a random coffee here and there or perhaps hope you’ll be able to spend time with the kids this weekend. Instead, just like the work itself you absolutely must factor in downtime for relaxation and much-needed escape from work, which again you should stick to with as much discipline as your actual on-duty timetable.

Accept help

And finally, you might want to keep things 100% under your own control, but the difference that can be made in a personal, social, domestic and business sense by taking on a little help is really off the scale. Even if this just means getting your partner to occasionally respond to a few emails or handling ingoing/outgoing post a couple of hours a week, the lightening of the burden is truly priceless.

*Lisa Morton returned to the home office after a stint working a variety of Glasgow staff nurse jobs. She’s now a keen blogger and loves to share her experience of different working environments.

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