I WAS conducting an interview from my office, which doubles as my home, and was frustrated because the loud leaf blower outside was drowning out my words and thoughts. I walked from one room to another to find some quiet, stumbling at one point over a laundry basket. All the while, I was hoping I sounded professional.
Coincidentally, I was doing an interview on the pitfalls and pleasures of working from home. While the concept is nothing new, working from home has become increasingly easier and more necessary. Easier, with computers and smartphones, more necessary for those who want to, or have to, start their own businesses.
But the transition from a traditional office to one at home can be difficult. The most common danger is unproductively whiling away the hours without anything to show for it. Will you just hang out on Facebook or watch endless “Law and Order” reruns?
The truth is most people find a way to structure their workdays so they are as productive — or more so — than they were in a traditional office. But there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
“Each of us is different, and the way we work is different,” said Peter Bregman, a consultant and author of “18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the Right Things Done” (Business Plus, 2011). “The important thing is to understand who you are and embrace that.”
I happen to find it useful to step away from my computer and do some housework or laundry, but I always return to the task at hand after a short while.
Others use cleaning as a way to procrastinate endlessly. A friend of mine writing her doctoral thesis once told me it was amazing how many filters she could find to change in her house while avoiding her thesis. So for people like my doctoral candidate friend, taking a cleaning hiatus is a bad idea.
Mr. Bregman suggests focusing on what will make it more likely that you will do the jobs you need to do, rather than simply telling yourself you should have more discipline.
Figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, he said. For example, do you find yourself distracted by constant e-mails? Then reserve certain times of the day — and only those times — to check your e-mail. Or turn off your Wi-Fi if you don’t have the discipline to stop yourself.
Years ago, Roz Chast, a cartoonist, came up with an ingenious way to trick her young son so he wouldn’t know she was working at home. She would say goodbye and walk out the door, and her husband would take her son to the back of the apartment. She would then sneak back in and up to her studio.
Another classic work-at-home question: pajamas versus work clothes.
My friend Lois, who recently left an office job and is doing public relations work at home, told me: “Even though my last workplace was casual, I liked getting dressed in clothes ‘nicer’ than I would wear around the house. I thought I would still dress nicely, but soon thought ‘why?’ So I am experimenting with clothes that are casual and comfortable and definitely steps up from my one rule — no sweatpants or my husband’s old college T-shirt.”
Besides looking professional, there is the problem of sounding professional — which can be hard when the noises we associate with home, like barking dogs, lawnmowers and the occasional child’s outburst, crop up during an important call.
“The most awkward moments in the early days of working out of the office in my barn was being in the midst of phone call with a client from, say New York, when one of our roosters decided to let go with a mighty crow,” Cliff Stepp, founder of Stepp Up Consulting, said in an e-mail. “The client stops and asks incredulously, ‘Did I just hear a rooster?’ ”
And, of course, there are children. Even if you try to get all your work done while they’re out of the house, that’s not always possible. Mr. Bregman said he came up with two solutions. One was a rule that his children must knock on his door if it is closed and wait for him to tell them to enter.
And second, a lock on his door.
“You need to make rules, and you can’t break your own rules,” he said.
A good way to quiet external noise is to install an air-conditioner, which can also act as white noise, and to invest in a good set of headphones.
Then, there’s dealing with others’ assumption that working at home doesn’t really mean working.
E-mail: shortcuts@nytimes.com
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