I recently wrote about the Death of the Away Message. Communications are so pervasive, so ubiquitous, so tethering, that we never really can disconnect – if that’s what we seek. Someone replied with a gentle suggestion regarding my vacation: “Unplug a little if you can.”

A kind enough nudge from someone seemingly concerned about my enjoying a little R&R during my vacation.

But to many home officers, micropreneurs and small business owners, a simple, paradoxical equation prevails when presented the prospect of a vacation:

Time Away From the Office = Reductions in Billable Work = Lost Income Potential / Revenues

Multiply that equation by three weeks on the road, and the result can be downright devastating to the bottom line. To paraphrase my friend Jim Blasingame at the Small Business Advocate, “As a small business owner, if you don’t kill, you don’t eat.”

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Cindy Krischer Goodman, blogger over at the Miami Herald’s WorkLife Balancing Act, cited a study from Take Back Your Time that discovered that some 28% of Americans took no vacation time at all last year. Five in 10 took a week or less. Another study from Steelcase in 2006 says 49% didn’t take what they had coming to them.

No home officer workers here, apparently.

An interesting turn: some 69% of us here in the States support a paid vacation law; a bunch of those want three weeks or more each year. The obvious question: What the heck would we do with that vacation, since many of us aren’t using the vaca time The Man gave you in the first place.

This isn’t about The Haves whining about not using what they’ve got. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says one in four get no paid vacation. Not surprisingly, around half of men and women said they take work on vacation.

No home officer workers here, apparently. Read More »

The tools worked fine. The technology — my Verizon aircard was flawless, the HP tablet PC was a hit and it all stashed neatly into my Foray mobile workmate.

Managing expectations… THAT was the detail that needs more attention. My family was pretty understanding. Only one or two clients would ping me with URGENT projects that needed my attention Right Now, I tell you, NOW! (truth be told, my emphasis, not theirs…)

“The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.”

American author, essayist, poet, naturalist, transcendentalist, civil anarchist, abolitionist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote this sentence in the mid 1800s, from a place not far from where I’m writing these words today. I’m in Littleton, Massachusetts, less than 10 miles from Walden Pond.

I’ve long read and followed Mr. Thoreau’s work. That passage hangs on my wall and is a central piece of my work-at-home philosophy — and that I espouse when speaking to fellow entrepreneurs. In modern speak, it’s akin to, “Work smart, not hard.”

Yet I’ll admit: I had no idea how close we’d come to the place where he lived, worked and died, from 1817 to 1862. We’re less than five miles from Concord, his home — that is, when he wasn’t in the vast woods nearby.

Seeing the sign for Walden Pond State Recreation Area yesterday, I nearly had to pull over and explore. Yet the hour was late, and we needed to pitch camp (OK, so we’re in a camper – “pitching” camp means plugging in the power, water and cable)… Read More »

Before we left home on Home Office Highway, I made sure to let my clients and family know the boundaries we’d all be facing. I told them I’d be working “part time.” That meant, at least to me, that I’d ply my own hours — usually before the “traditional” workday or on a spotty, unpredictable schedule throughout.

But something funny happened on the highway: The home officer’s own expectations seem out of whack. I thought I’d be working very little. But I find myself working a fair amount. Less than at home, for sure. But more than I’d expected. I’m at the dinette table early (nothing unusual there), and checking email — in the RV, at gas stops (plenty of time there to fetch, read and reply), while standing atop Stone Mountain outside Atlanta.

I guess I’m the one who missed the work-expectations memo. Read More »

Alex Johnson is an ardent shedworker. From his home in St. Albans in England, Alex works from a shed — and blogs about the shedworking concept on Shedworking. He’s even written about it in the forthcoming book, Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution.

So when Alex and I got to talking about Home Office Highway, he commented on his summers spent working virtually at his in-laws place in Spain (those Europeans are SO cosmopolitan. I’m trying to have a little cosmo-mojo rub off on me by writing about Alex’s exploits).

I asked Alex to share his thoughts. Here’s what he had to say… Read More »