The Joy of Working from Home: Making a Life While Making a Living

Both pragmatic and inspiring, The Joy of Working from Home shows the current or prospective home-office worker how to set up an efficient home office and provides the support for making what for many will be a major life change. Combining detailed, useful information with encouraging advice and anecdotes, the book gives numerous positive examples of individuals who have successfully made the transition. The author-himself a home-worker for many years-provides realistic methods for striking a healthy balance between business and personal life.

Addressing the vital questions of lifestyle, and the difficult trade-offs between work and personal priorities, The Joy of Working from Home offers guidelines for wisely allocating every home worker's most valuable resource: time. It shows:
o how to organize both work and workspace efficiently;
o the inherent advantages of using a home-based office to achieve practical and personal rewards;
o techniques for avoiding the stress and distress of letting the demands of work and family intermingle.

Drawing on the experiences of many home-based workers, this book helps solve the problems of self-discipline, financial insecurity, isolation, and interruptions. It also offers valuable advice on dealing with the vulnerabilities that inevitably come with self-employment-creating a professional image, maintaining a positive attitude, nurturing the capacity to persist against obstacles, and developing the flexibility to deal with a variety of clients or customers.

The practical aspects of running a business out of a home office are also addressed. The Joy of Working from Home provides useful strategies for creating a business plan, low-cost marketing techniques, tips for networking in the community, and ways to keep expenses down. There is down-to-earth advice for avoiding the pitfalls of zoning and tax requirements, information on purchasing office equipment and supplies, and guidelines for contracting outside services. A resource section creates access to important publications, home-based business associations, government agencies, and database information for effective business and professional marketing.

This book will appeal to a broad spectrum of current and prospective home office candidates, including the newly self-employed professional, the budding entrepreneur, those weary of the corporate work environment or long commutes, and those determined to restore the balance between their personal and professional lives.

Jeff Berner has been an independent writer, photographer, and lecturer for over 25 years. He leads seminars on home-office success, edits and publishes the Success Working from Home newsletter, and is the author of The Joy of Working from Home as well as ten other books, including The Executive's Guide to Portable Computers and The Nikon Touch Photography Guide.