|
Small Office, Home Office Information |
Copy Text Online |
|
If you need words then you need us Providing text solutions for small business everywhere Copytextonline.com |
|
|
|
Setting Up Your Home Office If every Aussie bloke needs a shed then every small businessman who operates from home needs an office. Of course, actually finding the space for an office can be difficult and the dining room table often becomes the office for many people. Even if you have a spot in the house to call your own you can still be faced with problems. The cost of setting the room up as an office can make a very large hole in your bank account. However, if you're sensible and sit down and make a little list before you rush out to spend your money you can minimize the expenditure. The trick with the list is to identify those things that are essential, those things that you would like and those things that you really can do without. Once you have the items on your list nicely sorted into it's time to resort them. Obviously you need to think in terms of essentials etc. but you also have to think in terms or productivity. You need to be able to work smarter, not harder and sometimes that translates into spending money to actually make money. So now go through your list again and identify those things that will actually save you time or help you work more effectively and efficiently with the time you have. For example, let's look at my office and that's what is shown in the photo. It's really rather plain isn't it? I mean I don't even have a proper desk do I? But I sure do have a lot of computer gear there.
There are three 17 inch flat screen monitors, two computers, a printer, a scanner, a couple of keyboards and mice and the obligatory coffee cup and they are all perched on a rather rough looking table. Oh … there's also a cheap bookcase and, only partly in the picture, a very comfortable clothe upholstered high-backed office chair. Where is the classy desk and all the other trappings of a successful small business person? Um … I don't have them because I don't need them. Everything that I need to make money is right there in the picture. I don't need a swank looking desk and I actually don't need any desk at all. Instead a folding table from the hardware store that cost all of $79.00 is ideal for what I want. It is at a perfect ergonomic height for me and I can work at it all day without placing any strain on my body. But the chair is a slightly different matter. Relatively speaking it cost much more than the table but then I need a good chair that will support me and won't leave every joint in my body aching at the end of a long day. I purposely chose a clothe upholstered chair, as did Toni, because here in sub-tropical Queensland it gets hot in summer and a leather chair is too uncomfortable. And even though we spent a reasonable amount on the chair, and on Toni's too, we will get rid of it at the end of 12 months and buy a new one. Not because we like new things but because we sit in those chairs for anything up to 18 hours a day and after a year of that treatment they are tired and are no longer supporting us as well as they first did. And now to what many of you must think of as being an extravagance. Three 17 inch flat screen monitors are not an extravagance for me at all - in fact they save us money because the increase my productivity. The black one on the right is connected to the grey box and that computer acts as our Internet and mail server as well as running our LAN. I keep a few programmes running on that all the time because I need to keep an eye on our incoming mail and a couple of websites where we do business. The two on the left are connected to the black box and that is the machine that I do most of my work on. But why use two monitors? Because I am often working on something that I'm looking at on the left hand screen and actually doing the work on the centre screen. You may find it hard to believe but the saving in time has more than paid for those two monitors and the special graphics card that powers them. Instead of wasting time restoring and minimizing programmes from the task bar - as I would have to do if I only had one monitor - I can leave both open and work away without the need to stop and start every few minutes. So I hope from that example you can see that we have invested heavily in things that will make us money and not bothered with the things that are basically window dressing. And that is what you should be aiming for too. It's nice to have a mahogany desk with leather inlay but will it really suit your needs and will it help you make money? The people who do business with us pay us on what comes from our heads not from our desks so why waste money on things we don't need. So put productivity above the urge to have pretty things and you will spend your money wisely. |
at Amazon. We are very satisfied with their service and price point
is hard to beat.