Fixed and not fixed
I am not a morning person. I am quite happy working from 1 PM to 10 PM. This is one reason why I have been so productive in my life. I force myself to go to work in the morning, and happily do second shift activities.
Mornings were perpetually a problem at my business in my home. People who arrived early would commonly catch me still in the shower. Even clients who arrived on time would find themselves waiting on the front porch in the cold while I ran late getting dressed. (I work out before work, so the last thing I do each morning is shower and get dressed.)
My new business model is functioning very well in the mornings. I declare that portion of the FML ("fix my life") project complete.
Now I have to fix the evening part. It used to be that I would work until dinner was ready, eat dinner with my family, then a client would arrive and call me back to work.
Now I stay at the office, starving, missing my family, without any help (or really reluctant help). I try to line up food but it fails for a variety of reasons. I am working 70 hour weeks and only home to sleep and exercise and shower, there is not a lot of time in that schedule for shopping and cooking.
But I need to try. Yesterday I baked a chicken breast, steamed some brown rice and broccoli, and made up three dinners to reheat.
I need to figure out how to work from 8 to 10. My staff fall off about then and I end up doing management things when they are gone, but I really need to be getting product out the door. I had anticipated that some of my five employees hired and trained for this purpose would work, but they are disinclined.
Can I go home and work from my home office? Get staff who can work evenings?
It is horribly hard to find staff and I don't have time to look. I could possibly try to find staff to volunteer for hours but I can't make them. (They can barely show up for their minimum scheduled shifts and spend that time asking when they can leave, texting, and taking personal phone calls.)
Going home and working evenings would work for my life, but not really for the technology. I don't have remote access to my server. It wearies me to even consider how that would work. Besides, the work we do at night is the very stuff that I wanted staff help with: I review returns, they print and assemble and bill them. I don't WANT to do the scut work.
Could I review from home and leave the assembly for the morning shift? Errors would be introduced if staff weren't working next to me, I oversee the assembly ("no, the voucher goes to New York, not Massachusetts.") Also, staff doesn't actually do anything if I am not standing next to them making them.
So I think what I am saying is that I need to staff 8 pm to 10 PM. I wonder if I could get Small Boy to do this? As a teenager he is pretty much a night person. His training is coming along well enough that he could pick up this para-professional function. I will ask him.
If he says "no" then I don't know what I try. I have eight more weeks of tax season and my work output is really in trouble. (Effectively, I am missing SNAG, but not that much: he is replaceable by ten hours a week of teenage labor.)
I am using Sundays fairly well. Sleeping in, puttering around household chores, shopping and going to the office, arranging the flowers I just brought and cleaning the office and watering plants, then knuckling down to finish a thorny mess that needs uninterrupted time. I am refreshed just enough by only working four to six hours on Sunday that I can face the next six days that go roughly 9 AM to 10 PM.
Sort of.
Mornings were perpetually a problem at my business in my home. People who arrived early would commonly catch me still in the shower. Even clients who arrived on time would find themselves waiting on the front porch in the cold while I ran late getting dressed. (I work out before work, so the last thing I do each morning is shower and get dressed.)
My new business model is functioning very well in the mornings. I declare that portion of the FML ("fix my life") project complete.
Now I have to fix the evening part. It used to be that I would work until dinner was ready, eat dinner with my family, then a client would arrive and call me back to work.
Now I stay at the office, starving, missing my family, without any help (or really reluctant help). I try to line up food but it fails for a variety of reasons. I am working 70 hour weeks and only home to sleep and exercise and shower, there is not a lot of time in that schedule for shopping and cooking.
But I need to try. Yesterday I baked a chicken breast, steamed some brown rice and broccoli, and made up three dinners to reheat.
I need to figure out how to work from 8 to 10. My staff fall off about then and I end up doing management things when they are gone, but I really need to be getting product out the door. I had anticipated that some of my five employees hired and trained for this purpose would work, but they are disinclined.
Can I go home and work from my home office? Get staff who can work evenings?
It is horribly hard to find staff and I don't have time to look. I could possibly try to find staff to volunteer for hours but I can't make them. (They can barely show up for their minimum scheduled shifts and spend that time asking when they can leave, texting, and taking personal phone calls.)
Going home and working evenings would work for my life, but not really for the technology. I don't have remote access to my server. It wearies me to even consider how that would work. Besides, the work we do at night is the very stuff that I wanted staff help with: I review returns, they print and assemble and bill them. I don't WANT to do the scut work.
Could I review from home and leave the assembly for the morning shift? Errors would be introduced if staff weren't working next to me, I oversee the assembly ("no, the voucher goes to New York, not Massachusetts.") Also, staff doesn't actually do anything if I am not standing next to them making them.
So I think what I am saying is that I need to staff 8 pm to 10 PM. I wonder if I could get Small Boy to do this? As a teenager he is pretty much a night person. His training is coming along well enough that he could pick up this para-professional function. I will ask him.
If he says "no" then I don't know what I try. I have eight more weeks of tax season and my work output is really in trouble. (Effectively, I am missing SNAG, but not that much: he is replaceable by ten hours a week of teenage labor.)
I am using Sundays fairly well. Sleeping in, puttering around household chores, shopping and going to the office, arranging the flowers I just brought and cleaning the office and watering plants, then knuckling down to finish a thorny mess that needs uninterrupted time. I am refreshed just enough by only working four to six hours on Sunday that I can face the next six days that go roughly 9 AM to 10 PM.
Sort of.