Sometimes it’s hard to keep high productivity at home.

We moved recently, but in our old house my office was conveniently located on the first floor. It was pretty easy to pop in now and then to check on an email I was expecting, or to see if a domain name had been setup yet, etc.

It was also easy for my daughter (now just about three years old, then about two years old) to come to the door and ask me to come play with her. And because playing with her is more fun than just about anything I can do online, I’d always take a break and play for a while.

That made it hard to get any serious head-down time on any project, though.

In our new house, we turned one of the bedrooms into a play room, so my office was relegated to the (partially finished) basement. Now when I go into my office, it seems to be out of sight out of mind, and my daughter only rarely comes knocking on the basement door to find me. We don’t have a restroom in the basement, though, so every time I go upstairs she tends to collar me.

When you’re setting up a home office, give some thought to how accessible you want to be. On the one hand, you want to spend time with your family, that’s one of the reasons for working at home. On the other hand, you do need to get something done, or you won’t earn much from home!

If your home office cannot be in a place that’s hard to get to, then at least close the door when you’re in there, and set the rule that interruptions are only for emergencies.

That never worked with my daughter in our old house (she’d knock on the door), but you never know, you might get lucky!