Working from home offers the best of both worlds, but not without its unique challenges. Coping with living where you work, and working where you (and your family) live, can be more complicated than it appeared when you first thought up those great home base business ideas. Here is a look at a few of the common issues and some tips on how to master them.

The end of the workday routine

The alarm goes off at the usual time. The kids head off to school and your partner heads off to the regular work environment. You - proud new home business owner - are suddenly left in a quiet house. It doesn't feel like a work day. It feels a bit disorienting, actually. Why?

We're creatures of habit. We organize our lives, to a great extent, by recognizing cues, or signals, that psychologists call "triggers". Triggers, simply, are the events or surroundings that we learn to associate with feelings, and actions. Triggers give us permission, or instruct us, to behave and feel in certain ways. Make sense? Stay with me.

We've been learning these associations all of our lives and one of the triggers we learned all the way back in kindergarten is that if we are home, it's a day off, a holiday, or we are sick. You work out there at the office - you play or relax in here, at home.

If you weren't raised on a farm, or in a family that operated home based businesses, working at home is a foreign idea. Its likely that all of your old associations about being at home will trigger many feelings and motivations, but none will tell you that you are at work. working from home - home office

How to cope with old triggers

If you can't keep 'em, get 'em to join up. Keep as much of your old work related routine as possible. Get up at the usual time, shower and dress for the office. Keep business hours for business and as much as possible relegate yard work, laundry and cleaning the bathrooms to after work or the weekends - just like you had to do when you had a job outside the home.

Set aside a room, if possible, to be the home business place. If you don't have a spare room, set aside a corner, or nook and seperate it from the rest of the house with a bookcase, file cabinets, or whatever you have available. Until you have the new home business triggers, simulate being at work and fool your old triggers into working for you.

Nobody thinks I'm working!

You've told everyone you are now working from home, but no one seems to get it. Your mother calls and wants to chat. Your friends call and want to chat. You partner calls from his, or her, outside job on break and wants to chat. Your Sister needs you to watch her kids, your best friend needs help moving on Thursday. Your children, even your partner who should know better, interrupt you with problems, questions, or just to tell you about a funny thing that happened today. What is wrong with everyone?Triggers.

Just like you they have an adjustment period to go through. They learned trigger associations, too. Intellectually they know you are working, but subconciously their triggers are saying, "He/she is at home, they aren't really working"

How to cope

Technology has made screening telephone calls easy. Explain to everyone that you can't take personal calls during working hours, unless its an emergency, and then get call display. It will leave a record of who called so you can get back to them after business hours.

Children and life partners are another matter. You can't ignore them - why would you want to anyway - but you do have to work. So, teach them some new triggers.

One home business client of mine taught her family that if the door to the home business office was closed they needed to fend for themselves for a while. If a red scarf was tied to the doorknob that meant don't even knock unless somone is in need of medical attention.

Another, who didn't have an extra room to use as an office, taught his family that if he was wearing his Calgary Flames cap he wasn't to be disturbed. Your family loves you and wants you to be successful. They'll abide by the signals if they know what they are.