How do you cope with home schooling when you also work from home?

It seems like an ideal fit: A parent works from home and home schools a son or daughter at the same time. But home schooling when you work from home comes with a number of potential pitfalls.

Fortunately, you can avoid these pitfalls with some advance planning.

The biggest problem associated with home schooling when you work from home is a lack of time. Working from home often involves as many hours as working in an outside office. This leaves precious little time to devote to home schooling a child.

Maintaining a strict schedule is the way to resolve this issue. Make sure your son or daughter starts school lessons at the same time every day. Make sure, too, that you have a lesson plan worked out to cover the entire week. It’s even better if you can draft a lesson plan for the entire month.

Stick to this plan. Make sure that it includes time for the child to work on his or her own. During these breaks, when you’re not actively teaching, you can concentrate on your own work-from-home schedule.

It also helps to have support from your spouse or family member. If you’ve spent much of the day teaching basic astronomy to your home-schooled children, you’ll need to devote some time in the evening to work. Your spouse must understand this, and be willing to handle tasks like making dinner, cleaning the dishes and getting the children ready for bed.

It’s rarely a perfect situation when you’re home schooling when you work from home. But with cooperation between spouses, and the guidance of a strict schedule, it can be done, and it can be done successfully.

Make sure that you manage your time really well when you are working from home.

Working from home is a dream situation for many employees tired of facing long commutes to sit inside a barren cubicle all day. But working from home can be a challenge, too. That’s why it’s important for employees to manage their time well when working from home.

Your bosses expect you to be productive even if you’re working from home. This means that you have to meet your work goals and turn your assignments in by deadline.

This can be challenging to employees not used to working from home. Being free from the office brings flexibility to your workday. You can work early in the morning or late at night. You can take time off for a long walk or a bicycle ride. But if you’re not good at managing your time, you may also find yourself consistently turning in work assignments late.

This is not good for your career. At the worst, your boss will fire you. At the least, your boss will end your work-from-home privileges.

Fortunately, managing your time when working from home doesn’t have to be that difficult. In fact, it takes just a few simple steps.

First, make sure that family members who are home understand that you are supposed to be working. It’s OK to take small breaks. That’s one of the benefits of working from home. But don’t allow your spouse or children to distract you from completing your work assignments.

It’s a smart move to talk with family members before you start your work-from-home arrangement. Make sure everyone is clear that you still have set work hours, even if you’re logging them from a home office instead of a cubicle in the city.

Next, don’t allow other distractions to take you from your work. Don’t turn on the television in the middle of day, even if you just want to watch for the news headlines. A short burst of TV watching can turn into an hour or more of wasted time.

Stay away from personal phone calls, too. It’s easy to make them when you work from home. But these can suck up a tremendous amount of work time.

Resist, too, those neighbors or friends who invite you for a quick lunch or an afternoon bike ride. Many of these friends will think you’re fair game for visits just because you’re home during the day. Make sure they understand that you are working.

By setting these ground rules, you will be able to effectively manage your time when working from home. And you’ll be surprised at how productive you can be.