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October 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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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BBC to Cut 2,000 Jobs and Show More Reruns

October 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Mark Thompson, the broadcaster’s director general, told his staff that the changes — which amount to cuts of about $1.03 billion a year, or a 20 percent reduction in spending over five years — would lead to a “smaller, radically reshaped BBC.”

He said that no television or radio stations would be closed down and that some money would be reinvested in new programming and services.

The BBC is financed mostly through a government-approved license fee, paid every year by every household in Britain that owns a television set. The fee brings in about $5.5 billion a year. In the early part of the century, spending increased annually, allowing the broadcaster to expand its services and introduce channels.

But after a series of embarrassing episodes, including the disclosure of the huge salaries paid to bureaucrats in the organization, the BBC was forced to curtail spending. Last year, confronted with a Conservative-led government skeptical of its financing model, the BBC agreed to freeze the license fee at its current rate of £145.60, or about $224, a year until 2017.

The steps amount to a 16 percent cut in income, the BBC says. It has also decided to redirect 4 percent of its spending. Among other things, Mr. Thompson said, it plans to invest more money in dramas and comedies for its flagship channel, BBC 1. Its second channel, BBC 2, will broadcast only reruns in the daytime.

Some of the employees whose jobs are being eliminated may be “retrained and redeployed,” Mr. Thompson said. In addition, 1,000 workers will be relocated from London to Salford, near Manchester, where the BBC has moved a portion of its operations.

Unions reacted with dismay, saying that the BBC would lose credibility and audiences if it continued to cut its services.

“They are destroying jobs and destroying the BBC,” said Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of Bectu, a union that represents technicians.

Mr. Thompson said that after years of budget cutting, the broadcaster had trimmed its spending as much as possible and could not sustain another freeze or decrease in the license fee.

“I don’t think we could do this again,” he said. “Another real-terms cut in the license fee would lead to a loss of services or potentially a diminution of quality, or both.”

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New Cutbacks Announced by BBC

October 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Mark Thompson, the broadcaster’s director general, told his staff that the changes — which amount to cuts of £670 million or about $1.03 billion a year, or a 20 percent reduction in spending over five years — would lead to a “smaller, radically reshaped BBC.”

But he said that no television or radio stations would be closed down and that some money would be reinvested in new programming and services.

The BBC is financed mostly through a government-approved license fee, paid every year by every household in Britain that owns a television set. The fee brings in about £3.6 billion a year. In the early part of the decade, spending increased annually, allowing the broadcaster to expand its services and introduce new channels.

But after a series of embarrassing episodes, including the disclosure of the huge salaries paid to layers of bureaucrats in the organization, the BBC was forced to curtail its spending. And last year, confronted with a Conservative-led government skeptical of its financing model, the BBC agreed to freeze the license fee at its current rate of £145.60 until 2017.

The steps amounts to a 16 percent cut in income, the BBC says. It has also decided to redirect 4 percent of its current spending elsewhere. Among other things, Mr. Thompson said, it plans to invest more money in dramas and comedies for its flagship channel, BBC 1. Meanwhile, its second channel, BBC 2, will broadcast only reruns in the daytime.

Some of the people faced with losing their jobs might be “retrained and redeployed,” Mr. Thompson said. In addition to the cuts, a further 1,000 employees will be relocated to Salford, near Manchester, where the BBC has moved a portion of its operations.

Unions reacted with dismay, saying that the BBC would lose credibility and audiences if it continued to cut its services.

“They are destroying jobs, and destroying the BBC,” said Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of Bectu, a union that represents technicians.

Mr. Thompson said that after years of budget-slicing, the broadcaster had cut its spending as much as possible and could not sustain another freeze or decrease in the license fee. .

“I don’t think we could do this again,” he said. “Another real terms cut in the license fee would lead to a loss of services, or potentially a diminution of quality, or both.”

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