You’ll want to define a professional work area that separates your business from your personal life whether you’re self-employed or telecommuting. Its location, lighting, and confinement of clutter are all important. Create a detailed list of your needs for a home office and set up a space that meets those requirements before you arbitrarily claim a corner in one of your rooms and decide that it’s “good enough.” You might find that a spare room with a door can reduce noise from the rest of the house if you’ll be on the phone frequently. It could make sense to choose a room near the front entrance of the house if you’ll be meeting with clients in your home office. You might need a dedicated studio that’s separate from the rest of your home if you need space to spread out design or tech equipment. You might want to keep a plant or two in your workspace as an added touch that can improve your well-being. Research has shown that having plants in an office can increase your productivity and make you happier while you work. A shared voicemail can sound unprofessional or confuse clients who expect a message specific to your business, and if you use the same landline for your home and work, you risk having a child or other family member answer the phone. Research published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that having their smartphones accessible reduces workers’ productivity, especially if they’re already prone to overusing their phones. This is the case even if the power is off so the phone isn’t chirping, binging, or vibrating. You probably can’t afford those wasted hours if you’re self-employed, and your employer will likely scrutinize your work carefully to make sure you aren’t doing other tasks while you’re being paid for working if you telecommute. Fully segmenting your business from your personal records will help at tax time, too. The IRS tends to scrutinize tax deductions related to home offices, and the more you can prove that the office is a completely separate and dedicated area, the better you’ll be able to meet the IRS definitions of a home office and avoid an audit. The IRS says your office must:
Be the principal place of your businessBe used exclusively for work purposes
This means you can’t simultaneously keep an eye on your kids as they watch TV on the other side of the room—at least not if you’re going to claim a home office deduction for the whole room. And it’s okay if you have to travel occasionally for work, visiting clients’ or customers’ locations, as long as you effectively run your business from your home office space. Workers in a home office are more likely to overwork than those in a traditional workspace. Have some way in place to track time in your office, whether it’s a clock on the wall or the alarm on your phone. Tracking time will encourage you to break up your workday effectively, and it will help you maintain regular work hours and a healthy work-life balance.
