The Guardian is reporting that drivers are being told to sort out the problem of rush hour congestion by working from home more or the government will charge them for the privilege of sitting in a traffic jam. Not exactly applicable to everyone on the roads though, though no doubt many kids would like it if their teachers worked from home. The sentiment is good though it’s just the method that’s flawed. Rather than say “Work from home or we’ll charge you” they should be offering incentives to work from home, such as tax breaks or similar.

This friday, employers are being urged to allow their employees to work from home. Yippee!

Hang on, I do it already. Oh well.

OK, there’s a few links I promised myself that I’d put in to help with technorati and other search rankings so they are here (they don’t have much to do with working at home - sorry)

Outdoors Gear Blog
Another Outdoors Gear Blog
SEO from Scotland
Scottish Holidays Blog

CNN have an article about work at home scams. People who use the internet a lot may well be familiar with most of these common scams, but if you are approaching starting a home business without much experience of the scams that are going on on the internet then do have a look and beware you don’t fall prey to any of these scams.

I know I keep linking to these, but I guess whenever I find a good work at home website I want to share it. This one has been around for ages - I remember looking at it a few years ago. Busy forums and a really nice feel to the site make it a pleasant place to spent time researching work at home business and opportunities.
The site is http://www.wahm.com and is primarily aimed at work at home mums, but I think work at home dad’s are made just as welcome.

When you’re getting your fledgling work at home company off the ground you’ll probably be thinking of a website too. Watch out though when you’re buying your domain that you don’t end up with something like these ones on Independent Sources site.

The owners of these domains probably didn’t realise what they were doing at the time but I bet they haven’t changed them due to the huge link popularity they must be enjoying from people linking to them. My favourite has to be www.ipanywhere.com. If only I’d bought that one up for my toddler I’d be laughing.

The Yellow Pages in the UK has a survey out reporting a boom in work at home mothers over the last six years. The story is in the BBC news website. They cite one example of a woman with a nursing agency in Glasgow that she runs from home and it has been turning over £11 million a year for the last 3 years. Not too shabby. I wonder if they’ve got any info on the numbers of Dad’s working from home?

It only happens occassionaly, but when the little one brings home a cold from nursery I am bound to catch it. And being a typical bloke, I don’t suffer illness well. I get grumpy.

However when you work from home you are way less likely to chuck a sicky, so in my case I go down to my computer and get digitally grumpy. It doesn’t help. The cold is still there and the amount of work I’ve got through is close to none. All I’ve done is go and be grumpy on some forums and generally feel sorry for myself.

Hope it goes away soon (both the cold and the grump).

There’s a nice article here about basic time management to ensure you get maximum efficiency when working at home and the kids are back at school. OK, it’s aimed at work at home mums but really applies to everyone.

I think that effective time management is the biggest obstacle most people face when they start working from home. Even when you’ve been doing it for a few years, it pays to revisit your plan for time management. If you can shave an hour or two off the time spent “working” each day and still get the same amount of work done, then that’s another hour or two you have to spend with your kids.

The BBC reports that fathers in the UK are unwilling to break with tradition and don’t tend to change their working habits to cope with the responsibilities of being a new parent. It’s a sad thing. Dad’s working at home is the new revolution. If more of us would embrace it there would be communities of work at home dad’s springing up all over the place. Just imagine, doing some work first thing then going down the park with your child and meeting up with your mates and their kids for a kick about. Is it such a bad thing?