That title may sound slightly accusatory – but we are not suggesting that you don’t work hard when you are sitting at your desk at home. No, the purpose of this article is to think about how many hours you actually do work that you will be paid for.

Most people don’t think of working in this way. They assume that because they arrive at their desk at 9am and leave it at 5pm – with an hour for lunch somewhere in between – that they work for seven hours a day. But you need to consider that you won’t be actively engaged in practical work you can charge a client for during every single one of those seven hours.

Let’s take an example so we can see how this works. Let’s say you have a job from a client that will take seven hours, and let’s say you can work on it without interruptions and without stopping – except for a break for lunch. This means you could complete the job in a single working day by working 100% of that day.

But in reality life at home isn’t like that. There is a high possibility that you will need to start by checking your business emails to see if any new work has come in. This could take you half an hour to complete. You might also need to do some invoicing for work you have already completed, assuming you are a one man band (which many home businesses are). This could take another half an hour.

So suddenly you will be working just six hours out of a possible seven that day when it comes to working on actual client projects. This means you will have to work one more hour the following morning in order to complete the project you are engaged on.

But of course you still haven’t accounted for doing any more promotion or marketing. Once this job ends will you have others lined up? If not, you need to figure in some time for marketing as well.

So you can see here that not every hour you work will be one that is paid for by the client. You should set your fees so they take this into account, but you can see how important it is to keep an eye on your actual working time. This is because you need to think about building in adequate marketing and administrative time, as well as time to get all of those other little things done each day.

Not every business person thinks about their working day like this. But if you actually monitor the tasks you do each day and time them, you will see that you spend your day rather differently from how you thought that you did. The more knowledge you have about your business day, the more likely it is you will successfully charge the right rates and plan more successfully for the future.

So – how much time do you really spend working?

Author Bio: Naz Daud – CityLocal Home Business Work at Home UK Home Business Ireland Home Business

Category: Jobs
Keywords: work, home, hours, working, business