I run a small online shop. Have for about a year now. Before that, I had a commute, an office, and somehow, more time with my kids than I have now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nobody warns you about this part. You picture working from home as being more<\/em> present. What actually happens is you’re home, but you’re also in six tabs and two calls, and your kid has learned that “mom’s working” means “mom’s not really here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a while I tried fixing this the hard way. Hourly check-ins, which fell apart by lunch. A “no phones after dinner” rule I couldn’t enforce because I was usually still working after dinner myself. Every fix I tried required me to remember to do it, which was exactly the thing I didn’t have spare capacity for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My sister’s been doing the same kitchen-table-business thing for longer than I have, with a teenager in the house. I mentioned my “phones after 8pm” plan, half-joking about how bad I was at sticking to it. She laughed and said she’d stopped trying to manage it manually a long time ago. She just has something running quietly in the background instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n