Home Office

A nice collection of practical wisdom from home office inhabitants at A List Apart today.

This is me:

Use Grand Central. Grand Central is an application that masks several phone numbers as one. You input all your phone numbers and label them “home,” “mobile,” “work,” etc. The application gives you one phone number, local to your area code, that you can hand out. It’s fantastic for having one phone number and being on the road, at home, at my external office, at the coffee shop, etc.

Too bad Grand Central has not been creating new accounts for over six months now. I hope they get back in the swing of things soon.

This is not me:

Get paid. Run your business like a law firm. I use FreshBooks and Backpack. I run a journal on my daily activities. I schedule what I am working on and when I am working on it. I bill for everything (phone calls, meetings, sketching ideas). I also know how many hours I need to meet my financial goals each month, each week, each day.

OK, I get paid, but I’m not this methodical about it!

This article is a sort-of companion to a piece earlier this summer about working from home.