How to Work From Home When It’s Other People’s Home, Too

Writing takes focus and concentration, and the environment in which you write matters. (It may seem very writerly and romantic to take your laptop to a coffee bar, but remember that the writers who worked in cafés in Paris of the 1930s only went there because the cafés were heated — and the small hotels in which said writers lived were not!) Most writers who produce a steady stream of good work do so alone, not in an atmosphere of chatter and clatter.

Unlike Sartre & company, many of us live in perfectly well-heated houses where we could work quite nicely, except for the fact we share those houses with other people. Spouses. Roommates. Children. They’re challenges, to be sure. But when faced with the decision between continuing to work from home and vying for a small table in a crowded coffee bar, don’t give up your space and your solitude until you’ve tried setting a few boundaries. For others. For yourself.

I live alone, so any distractions that happen are generally of my own doing. But ’twas not always so, and I had years of living with people who didn’t always grasp the fact that when I was working from home, I was, well, working.

That may be your current difficulty as well. There are a few things you can do to make sure your home-time and your work-time are not one and the same thing: