Working and living in the same space can be difficult, it can sometimes appear that you are always “at work”.  Whilst there are certain benefits of working from home, there are also as many drawbacks.

I love working from home, I love the flexibility of being able to spend time cooking in the kitchen with a laptop on the dining table, tweeting, stirring, blogging and chopping!  However there are definately times when the work part of the work life balance spills over into my private life when I wish it wouldn’t. 

To counter this, I also have a workspace setup in the corner of my bedroom with a PC and a phone.  Not an ideal solution but better than constantly working from my dining table.  The most ideal solution could be a seperate room where I could close the door and work with some peace (I have 3 children), however some may argue that this would defeat the object of working from home.  The most important thing to my mind is to create the perfect work life balance and this is where setting aside a perfect workspace for you is important.

Notice that I said setting aside a perfect workspace for you, what works for me may not work for you.  As I have said, sometimes working from my kitchen table is the perfect solution for me, whilst other times I need to shut myself away in my bedroom office to get a bit of quiet time.  But what is apparent is that to effectively work from home you need to designate a workspace.  It need not be the most regal of offices, but simply somewhere to switch off from home life and focus on the work life.

When starting a new venture it can be difficult to keep track of the 1,001 things that need doing. 

If you’re anything like me then you probably make lists on pieces of paper, or even in a notebook.  However this method of organisation is inherently flawed.  It is, in my opinion, the best method of generating ideas as a kind of brainstorm, whereby the best ideas can be easily highlighted and the worst scribbled out!  But pieces of paper and notebooks can easily become lost or damaged or even left behind at a critical time.  So ideas ideally need transferring to a more flexible medium, enter my latest favourite tool, Ta-da Lists.

By it’s own admission Ta-da lists is the easiest to-do list tool available online.  It’s free to sign-up and only takes 10 seconds to get going.  You can create multiple lists for anything you need (see a selection of random lists) and once you complete an item you simply ‘tick’ it off!

Sharing lists amongst friends and colleagues is also as easy a 1-2-3.  And accessing the list from anywhere is also just as easy with a wide range of browser support. 

With a free and simple sign-up process it makes sense to take a look.  What have you got to loose?