Just read a good article here about avoiding falling into a freelancer stereotype of getting up at noon and only working when a deadline looms. I’m pretty sure that most freelancers probably work harder for themselves than they would if being paid by “the man”.

Just read a nice article about structuring your hours when working at home. Everyone’s situation is a little different, so chances are that standard 9-5 hours are rarely going to apply to you when working from home. The article is giving good advice when it tells you to plan your work week then estimate the hours needed to fit everything in. The process of structuring your work like this usually leads to better efficiency when you do work because you know exactly what you’re doing from the moment you switch to work-mode.

An article on Personnel Today cites a report recently released suggesting 22% of employees would be willing to take a pay-cut in order to work from home. I can understand that - the costs of running an extra car for commuting and parking costs make a significant dent in a lot of employees incomes. Even with a slight pay-cut a lot of people would probably be better off working from home.

Read an interesting article today about the downsides to working at home - tenseness with your partner, isolation, not knowing when to take a break?!? etc. Worth a look

In the run-up to Christmas I was amazed at the number of people in the post-office sending off dozens of parcels with decidedly ebay-like address labels. I live in a small town and it must be empowering for people to make a bit of extra money by selling through the giant auction-monger. I also heard a lot of people in the post office queue’s tutting that people with lots of parcels were actually using the post office. The thing is, it’s these very people spending a few grand a year at the post office and causing queues that will help keep your local post offfice open. It’s clear that post offices might be losing out to courier services and other mail services, but the ebay phenomenon is keeping them busy. Long may it continue.