Welcome to the fourth of the weekly interview series where I will speak a wide range of people who have embraced the work from home opportunity. We will speak to entrepreneurs, business owners, large organisation workers and freelancers about their trials and tribulations from working remotely.

Our fourth interviewee is good friend of mine Carly Wood. If you like ridiculously creative content writers then look no further than Carly. I have had the pleasure of hiring Carly and her copywriting skills and if I required content again I would find it hard to find someone as good as Carly.

As well as being self employed and working full time on copywriting & SEO projects, Carly runs two successful fashion blogs that have received mentions in several top magazines & newspapers; both sites make a healthy financial contribution through advertising, which pays for the media and server charges entailed with running popular websites

Q: Hi Carly, tell us a little bit about yourself, where are you from, where do you live now?

I’m originally from Derby, I live in Pudsey near Leeds now.

I’m almost 27, I have a miniature schnauzer and I drink far too much tea.

I used to work in-house doing SEO and communications for a company in Nottingham, until I moved to Sheffield to do an MA in Media and Communications.  *boasting* I received a First Class grade overall.  I wrote my dissertation on Twitter – I did an ethnographic study into the existence of online community in the case of ‘anipals’, who are normal people who choose to tweet as their pets and not as themselves.  I could blather about that for hours, but really, one day I’ll just write it up into an article or blog post.

Q: What company do you work for and what is your role within the organisation?

I am a work at home mum (to my dog.  I don’t actually have any children).  I work for myself – I’ve not even got a website or business name yet.  Hahaha.

I started working for myself during university, to support myself financially.

I do copy writing, blogging and SEO mainly.

Q: How do you deal with stereotypes from friends in regards to productivity when working from home?  i.e.: Sleep until midday, 2 hour lunch breaks etc.

I agree with them…!  I watch Jeremy Kyle in a morning sometimes haha.  But in fairness, everyone has been very supportive.  If anyone did rib me for working at home, I’d just retaliate by informing them that I work Saturday, Sunday, all bank holidays & most evenings too.  So if I do get up at 9am one day because I’m feeling tired, I work for an extra hour at night.  Not traveling also gives you great flexibility – I must save an hour or two a day by not commuting.

Q: What is the most challenging part about working remotely and how do you overcome this?

Ooooh, the isolation!  My boyfriend is doing a PhD so I have him for company!  We work in separate rooms, but eat lunch and tea together.  Because he’s almost finished, he’s working 12+ hours a day – so he doesn’t mind if I need to do the same.

Q: What are the main positives around working from home?

If I fancy moving from the desk to the sofa I can do, and the dog comes and cuddles up with me!  That’s nice.  Working from home also means the dog isn’t left on his own during the day very often either.

Q: Do you have a dedicated office space and what is the importance of having this? 

The boyfriend has the office space (not sure how he wangled that) but once he’s finished his PhD I’ll steal the room back off him.  I still at a small table downstairs in the living room now, which I’ve decked out with my officey things.

I’m very funny in that I don’t like to sit too long in one place & I get very restless.  I’ll start at a desk/table and by the afternoon I’ll end up on the sofa, with a tray and feet up on the coffee table!! Haha!

If I’m cold and my boyfriend won’t let us put the heating on, i’ve been known to get in bed and work with a hot water bottle!!!!

Q: Any pictures of your office space?

Oooh. no – I don’t have a working camera at the moment…

Attached is a shot of some stationary on my desk, which I took in March for my friend who is obsessed with pink and green, after I noticed all my stuff was pink and green.

Q: Do you have any productivity tools you use to keep yourself efficient which may help our readers?

See the egg timer in the picture?  That.  It’s supposed to help productivity – the pomodoro technique if you’re easily distracted like me.  I swear I have ADHD sometimes!!

http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

You work for 25 minutes (times) and then take a 5 minute break (also timed) like that until you’ve finished your task.  It’s amazing how well it works actually.  Helps to boost focus and concentration during a task if you’re struggling.

Q: If you could give any advice to our readers before deciding whether remote working is for them then what would it be?

We moved to Leeds and I don’t know anyone up here, except my boyfriend.  So I’d say, make sure you have a good network of friends and family around.  You can get quite lonely without real people to talk to every day *awww*

I also think my dog walks help – after staring at a screen for 5 hours non-stop it really helps you feel less ‘square-eyed’ and you can think about your next task away from the laptop.

Q: Do you believe more organisations should allow those with web based roles to work remotely? If so..how come?

I used to work remotely once a week in my old company, every Wednesday.

I found that it broke the week up, which was nice.  It also allowed me to save around 1:30 in travelling time that day and meant I could work from, say 8am – 4pm and finish early – ultimately, that evening, I could get a lot of stuff done for my own projects.

It helped boost morale as I wasn’t thinking “urgh another day in the office”… “wish I could work on my own project instead”.

So, I guess if a company believes working remotely will help boost their staff’s morale, and therefore decrease staff turnover, yeah why not give it a try?