Professionals who work at home often set their own hours and pace, using the Internet to reap monetary reward. Self employment sounds great! What else is there to know?
There are a lot of myths about self employment out there, and it’s time to start telling the truth about working at home. There are five myths - and truths - every professional should know before taking that big leap into the great unknown.
Debunking Self Employment Myths
Hate waking up in the mornings? Can’t stand having a boss looking over shoulders? Wish that working at home every day was an option? To tell the truth about self employment, it isn’t something that just anyone can do. Why not? Don’t those who work at home…simply work at home? While being self employed may often mean being your own boss and calling the shots, there’s nothing simple about working at home - and not everyone can handle the pressure.
Five Things to Know Before Working at Home
1. Self employment myth: Self employed professionals always work at home, having no real-world contact with employers.
Telling the truth: While some clients and employers may be happy to conduct business via e-mail, there are those who want to have real-time contact. In some cases, it may be necessary for self employed professionals to speak on the phone with these employers and clients, or even download an Internet messenger service to exchange on-the-spot comments. Sometimes, work at home professionals even have to go to a real-world office to take meetings with the ones who write the checks.
2. Self employment myth: Sitting at home and working is a lot easier than going into an office an working.
Telling the truth: That’s debatable. Many self employed professionals don’t have to set an alarm, wake themselves up and get dressed for success. But some who work at home have to be on the Internet at certain times during the day even when the job is telecommute. Also, many self employed professionals find it hard to draw the line between home and work space. Home is the office, the office is home. Daily distractions and the sheer inability to get away from them can make working at home incredibly tough.
3. Self employment myth: Professionals who work at home labor for fewer hours than those who rely upon one employer for income.
: This is absolutely untrue. Many times, self employed professionals find it necessary to put in ten, twelve, even fourteen hour days. Sometimes, projects come all at once and deadlines suddenly seem to appear out of thin air. There may be days when those who work at home do so only for a few hours, and sometimes a 40 hour work week isn’t necessary. But many other times, the self employed get stuck working weekends, holidays, and late-night hours when others are already off the clock and enjoying reality TV.
Telling the truth
4. Self employment myth: Those who work at home are free of the employer criticism and petty inter-personal problems which arise in an office setting.
Telling the truth: Professionals who work at home may be on their own through most of their working hours, but that doesn’t mean self employment comes without criticism. In a world where almost everyone knows how to get online and share their own opinion, everyone is judged. Freelance writers may work in the safety of their own home offices, but reader comments still find a way inside. E-mail, messenger services, online forums - all of them can be excellent opportunities for the world at large to malign the work of a self employed professional. Consider this: those who work at home view those comments from home as well, often inviting criticism right into their most private sanctuaries. Those who don’t work from home simply leave the office and go to the safe environment of their homes. For the self employed professional, there is no safe environment. Too, the self employed are never - really - alone. There is always someone to buy the work, look over the work, judge the work - and there are still all those petty little problems that occur when human beings are forced to deal with each other.
5. Self employment myth: It’s easy!
Telling the truth: Successful self employment is a never-ending journey of job searches, networking, reputation-building, and skills maintenance. There is always some new program to learn, some new boss to please, some new client who wants something out of the ordinary. Every single project must be tweaked to suit each and every buyer, and sometimes it’s necessary to re-do a project several times before it’s even accepted. The self employed are truly all on their own when it comes to paying their own health insurance, coming up with a retirement plan, doing their own taxes and finding their own work. There’s nothing easy about being self employed.
