I’ve been working from home for the past three years now and I have now come across all the good and bad things about working from my home office. It’s a great thing to be able to tell someone that you work for yourself out of your house, however sometimes it’s nice to get out of the house and out in the city. There are tons of pros and cons as to why you should or shouldn’t work from home, but I think that once you get the hang of it, working from home can be the best thing ever.

Who Shouldn’t Work From Home
There are certain personality types that should just not bother trying to work from home. Maybe I shouldn’t say “personality type” rather I should say “motivation level”. You definitely need to be self-motivated in order to work from home. There is no boss telling you to wake up, take a shower, get dressed and sit down at your computer and start being productive. No one is there to tell you that your next report is due on Friday at 10AM. So if no one is there to tell you these things – you must do it yourself. Self-discipline is almost a MUST if you plan on working from home. You need to have the discipline to make yourself work, even though you might find yourself watching an extra 30 minutes of that soap opera you started watching while eating your lunch. It’s easy to get distracted too!

Avoiding Distractions
At home, distractions abound. If you have kids – you need to get daycare. You will not get any work done while trying to manage your kids, no matter how good they are. Besides that, there are household chores that can temp you too. It’s easy to say, “I’ll start work right after I finish the laundry” or “I just need to run out to the store for a few things” in the middle of your day, then never get to finish that important project. All in all, the best thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself a distraction-free environment. Set up your office to eliminate any sounds or visual cues of other things that might distract you from your work. If you have a quite part of the house – that is where you need to set up shop – not in the middle of the living room. On a side-note, there is a great resource for moms who work from home – WorkFromHomeMoms.com -this site has some great articles about working from home as a mother.

You’re the One Held Accountable
Even if you sub-out some of your work to freelancers or another agency to complete parts of your project, your client doesn’t know that. They hired YOU and expect the project to come from you. Make sure you deliver.

Get On a Schedule
Putting yourself on a consistent schedule will definitely make you more productive. If you wake up at different times of the day, go to bed at completely random hours of the night, and take lunch breaks at all hours of the day then your work will suffer. A consistent schedule is a boon to making sure your work is also consistent and of the highest quality. A good schedule will make sure you get into a good groove and clients will also respect your hours once you establish them. This sets the ground rules for when clients can call you.

Avoid Mid-Day Facebook Posts!
Posting to facebook during the middle of the day allows your friends (and clients) to see what you are doing during the middle of the day – usually when you are supposed to be working. Now for most people this might not be that big of a deal. However make sure you asses your situation and see if posting to your profile will get you in trouble or not!

Overall, working from home is a great thing to do, so long as you can make it work for you. It can be tempting to want to dive right in, especially if you have a crappy office job right now!

So I recently found a nice little website with reviews of golf simulators and which ones would be the best to buy. Now I’ve got no budget for a large, expensive projector screen golf simulator to be installed in some new addition onto my house, but I would love to see what’s out there. The thought of being able to play full rounds of golf from right within my house is pretty appealing.

I’ve tried using the Wii system and was less than impressed. The Wii golf game has poor graphics and doesn’t even require a full swing to make the ball go anywhere. Oh and you can’t even use a golf club. You have to use the standard controller or add their lame plastic golf club extension to the controller. Either way, using the controller is nowhere near the feel of a golf club.

While we’re talking about gaming consoles, I did try a system that worked with PlayStation 3 – it had a golf ball tethered to a pole that spun around when you hit it with a golf club. I liked this feature because I could actually use a REAL golf club, however the feedback from the game was just OK. The graphics were poor and I’m not sure how accurate the game was.

Now when it comes to real golf simulators, I tried out the aboutGolf simulators at the PGA Show this year – those are the real deal. The screen is enormous and extremely life-like. I just had to write this since I just read that article on golfsimulatorsforsale.com – good stuff!

I was recently featured on MO.com! This website is a great new site that is currently being developed to highlight entrepreneurs. The owner of the website, Brian Null, is a fellow entrepreneur and big-hitting domainer. As you can tell from his domain name – MO.com (every 1,2,3 and 4 letter domain in the .com is currently purchased) he knows what he is doing. He also used to own golfcourses.com as well as several other solid URL’s.

So check out his website and check my website soon for an updated look and better content!

This past Sunday night marked the first time since World War II that the St Simons Island Lighthouse has been turned off! In case you don’t know, the Lighthouse is an icon for St Simons Island – it stands at the southern tip of the island, overlooking the village, the pier and the view across to Jekyll Island. The historical society had a nice little function at the SSI pool to commemorate the occasion and got the entire community involved.  A band was there, free food was provided by Barbara Jean’s, and tons of people came to the event!

We took some pictures as the sun was going down and we also climbed to the top of the lighthouse! This happened to be my first time up in the lighthouse. There was a great view from the top and I got a few nice pictures while up there. Check them out:

On my recent trip to Chicago and Wisconsin, I stayed at a very cool hotel under the Starwood brand. The hotel was an “Aloft” hotel. Weird name, but they have a very modern vibe about them. One of the little perks of staying at this nuevo hotel was the 3 magazines that they provide for you in the bathroom area (they were all NEW magazines, so don’t worry, they weren’t tainted by some other bathroom reader before me). So one of these magazines was a “Wired” magazine. It was the first time I actually read one and I was super impressed! Not at the actual writing or anything, but the fact that they pointed out how UNCOOL it is to wear your bluetooth headset while not doing anything. Check it out:

Right on the cover they explain that even BRAD PITT can’t pull off the bluetooth headset. So I just wanted to give this magazine mad props for finally letting the world know that the bluetooth headset is queer!

So maybe I just don’t read the news enough, but apparently there was this thing going around Facebook where if you deleted 10 of your friends you got a FREE Burger King Whopper! Maybe I just haven’t been using Facebook enough to find out about this promotion, but this was hilarious! What a way to get some free food – just diss 10 friends! Ha!

As of right now, however, that offer is no longer valid because Facebook states that “This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend.” The Burger King ad agency has dropped the campaign, but now has a link on their website that lets you send an “Angry Gram”.  It’s a pretty funny concept, but I tested it out and you can’t really send as vulgar of a message as I thought you might be able to.  What’s the point of sending an “Angry Gram” if you can’t curse and holler?  Apparently this is the Burger King ad agency’s attempt to tap into society’s post-economy crash rage by providing a viral media outlet for which to express those feelings.  Nah.