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August 1-15, 1996

The Technology Revolution - a homecoming for your business

By John Knowlton, Editor of Business@Home magazine Knowlton Photo

Working from home. The phrase has a comfortable "feel" to it, doesn't it? It should. Working from home is the traditional way of doing business in America, as it is throughout the rest of the world. A century ago, some 90 percent of the people in the U.S. were self-employed, and most of them worked from home. Doctors saw patients in their living rooms. Salesmen worked from their inventory in their sheds. The shopkeeper lived with his family above the store.

Then the Industrial Revolution took hold and moved people from their homes into factories and concrete towers. The impetus was a switch from a service-based economy to a product-based one. Work and workstyle became automated, regimented, and controlled by the machine-driven mindset of the times.

Now a revolution of a different sort is under way - the technological revolution. Driven by lower cost computers and growing telecommunications services, this new revolution is allowing people to return home to work. They are doing so in droves. Forty-one million homeworker households in the U.S. last year will explode to 55 million households by the year 2000.

While technology is certainly The Great Enabler in the work-from- home movement, other factors contribute as well. Child-care concerns, commuter traffic, corporate downsizing - the operative word these days is "decruiting" - and governmental requirements to reduce air pollution are on the list.

But what tops the list is the lifestyle. Working from home, in fact, has become the lifestyle of choice in the 90's. People want to make a life while they make a living.

As editor of Business@Home magazine in Portland, Oregon, I have talked with hundreds of other homeworkers throughout the U.S. - independent professionals, blue collar workers, telecommuters and reluctant entrepreneurs victimized by the "workquake" rattling our society. The overwhelming majority say the integration of their work and personal lives has given them a more productive and flexible work- family environment. Many of them have started their own businesses, and are doing what they love for a living.

In short they're finding balance.

How many of us can truly say that our work life is in balance with our personal life - that our values and desires are reflected in the work that we do, that our personal life and professional life are fully integrated, or that we find satisfaction, not a defeat of the spirit, in our workday existence?

Very few of us. I believe the desire to balance work life with personal life is a central part of why the trend toward working from home is fast becoming a stampede. Millions of stressed-out, overworked people have become victims of time-poverty, and they are choosing a different path. Are you working from home yet? How are you coping with this professional, economic and social sea-change that is transforming America into a commonwealth of independent professionals? If you're not working from home, what are you waiting for?

Many of the tasks associated with "corporate" jobs can be accomplished from home. Identify them and propose to your supervisor that you work one day a week from home. Start slow, and build up your home base. Or, start your own part-time business at home doing what you've always wanted to do for a living. Setting up your personal home office now will give you a "lifeboat" to jump to if you get "decruited." It could even be the launchpad for a new business that puts you in charge of your own work life, your own security.

If you already are working from home, are you making the most of this opportunity to merge lifestyle with workstyle? For your sake, I hope so. Don't recreate the stress and strain of a corporate office. Take a break (or several) during the day. Renew yourself. Go for a walk in the park. Put your hands in the soil. Spend quality time with your children, your spouse, your friends, your neighbors.

Now is the time for you to live independently, within the spirit of community. We're all in this sea-change together. Let's move into the next millennium committed to the vision of making a life while making a living.

About the Author:

John Knowlton is founder and editor of Portland, Ore.-based Business@Home, a national monthly magazine for people who work from home and for those making the transition to a work-at-home environment. Subscriptions for $9.95/year are available by calling 1-800-597-0304. Drop him a line at john@gohome.com or visit his web site, The Home Office Hub, at http://www.gohome.com

Printed by permission of Business@Home