My husband and I were recently on a cruise, and we chatted with another passenger who was ranting about his work force being less than enthusiastic about returning to a physical office after the company decided that the pandemic work-at-home paradigm was affecting productivity and that workers cannot be trusted to self-monitor their productivity. I’ve read a few articles – and I’ve also heard anecdotally – that the opposite is actually true; that with fewer distractions and a comfortable home working environment, workers actually thrive and produce more. Workers who are moms – and who previously would have had to book the day off if their child took sick – can now attend to their child *and* keep working. There are most definitely home-based workers who slack off, and who see that unsupervised environment as a blank check to work at their own pace – which is different than the pace they had while in the physical office. But I think you’ll find even more examples of workers who are actually *more* productive at home, with fewer interruptions from coworkers and better focus and concentration in their home environment. It’s kind of like the kids who were home schooled during COVID: those who were already self-starters and good motivators of their own work ethic did pretty well taking online classes. Those who were not so well equipped raged out of control and gave their parents a whole new respect for teachers. I’ve been self-employed for almost 30 years. I worked fine with other people in the retail environment of my youth, but ever since I built my home studio and started producing sound files and putting myself on the map in the voiceover industry, I came to realize that I work just fine on my own. Nobody could push me harder than I push myself, and I know I have put in longer hours without glancing at the clock than if I had someone standing over me, telling to do so. Make no mistake: home can be rife with distractions. There’s a pantry with tempting snacks. There’s pets and kids. There’s Food Network streaming on a tab on your computer running behind everything else business-related. But the office has its own distractions. Co-workers wanting “just a second of your time”. Endless meetings which derail your workflow. Never-ending interruptions to your focus. If you’re the kind of worker who works well at home, what makes it so? I can tell you why it’s such a good fit for me. 1. I like the feeling of being in control of my day. At the end of one workday, I map out what I’m doing the next day. I plan a lot of “brainpower” tasks for earlier in the day, and I do most of my voicing in the morning when I’m fresher and more alert. More mundane, administrative tasks (invoicing, planning presentations) happens in the afternoon. 2. There’s nothing like the pleasure of not having to commute. I do not envy anyone having to hit the roads (especially in the winter) to get to work, and I’m forever grateful that my commute is from the coffee maker to my office down the hall. I feel grounded, comfortable, and in my element working from my home without a significant amount of time every day being wasted getting to and from the office. 3. Other things also get done. In those times where you need a break – and getting up from your desk is recommended at least once every hour – I love that I can fold laundry, make muffins, walk a dog, or straighten up my house as a way of re-setting my brain. Need to do a library run? Pick up groceries we need for dinner that night? I have the freedom and flexibility to be able to do it as a respite from work and come back refreshed.  If you have the freedom to work from home, and you have the ability to work well on your own – without a lot of oversight – I highly recommend it. You might just be one of those workers – like myself and my other voiceover colleagues – who thrive working that way and are very productive in a self-guided work structure. What being self-employed has taught me? I’m a self-starter, I’m independent, and I am ultimately accountable for the success of my business – a takeaway that’s extremely satisfying and rewarding.

You know the feeling. You’re thinking a thought, and you’re convinced that you have it all queued up and ready in your mouth to communicate it, have it fall on other’s ears, and have it make sense. And somewhere along that line of thinking it, prepping it, and sending it out, it gets garbled. An example: at the off-leash park, a dog came over to me and immediately buried its nose in a cross-body pouch that wear that holds the essentials: poop bags, tissues, and of course: dog treats. As the other owner and I were smiling at his dog’s persistence in getting a snack from me, I had planned to say: “They can’t resist the treat pouch! And what I actually said was: “They can’t resist the trout peach!” We both exchanged a look that said: “Well, that was awkward.” I thought I could feign being from a foreign country, but then I gave myself a break. That mental >>> verbal fail, as much as we dislike it, can actually be a symptom of your brain working almost too well. Sometimes the brain just moves faster than your mouth. You’re actually thinking several steps ahead, and that’s causing a disconnect between the brain and the mouth. When has thinking ahead ever been a bad thing? Being tired – or under the influence of alcohol or drugs – can contribute to the issue, but generally, the realization needs to be made: we’re human, and these verbal fails happens all the time to everyone. As a voice talent who has operated my own home-based studio for almost 30 years, I can tell you that re-dos and re-takes are a common event, and very seldom are there projects that get voiced smoothly, accurately, and error-free on your first try. Despite that, when I did voiceover work at public studios when I was just starting out, there was a lot of pressure to do things flawlessly on the first take, finishing the session in record time and arriving back at the parking lot before your car had a chance to cool down. You’ve cost the client less money in studio time, and the engineer can go onto other projects. A colleague of mine, who landed an on-air position with a busy news station, amazes me every morning when I listen to her. She seldom messes up, and when she does, she just keeps it moving. The pressure of doing it live is a huge impetus to strive for perfection. Even in that environment, “perfection” is an elusive and impossible goal. While I admire her on-point delivery, I like living in a world where redo’s are easy, usually (for me) yield a better delivery with every subsequent take, and makes me more inclined to only release my best work. So – about that tongue-tied word salad that occasionally comes out in everyday conversation, despite our best efforts? Here’s some tips to speak in a better, more metered way and reduce the change of that happening. Slow Down Speed being a factor in most accidents, it’s worth reminding yourself that going too fast will increase the possibility of derailment. Slow things down, in order to cause less of a chasm between the brain signal and the mouth translation. Take words deliberately and clearly It’s a phenomenon in professional voiceover where the announcer will just say the words correctly and in the right amount of time – but never actually think about what they’re reading. You can hear it any time you turn on the radio or TV – this robotic delivery of words. This is something we don’t do in conversation – we emphasize the appropriate words, and “push forward” words to advance our ideas. When I coach yoga instructors (and anyone who wants to speak better), I ask them to *really think* about the content they’re speaking and to give the significant words their due weight, as we naturally do. Your words will have less chance of getting garbled if you visualize what you need to say, think about what you’re saying, and give the proper emphasis to significant words. Nobody cares. You know the old saying: “You wouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of you, if you knew how little they did.” That. We’re convinced that everyone else is closely watching – and evaluating – everything we’re doing and saying. The cold hard fact is that everyone else is so wrapped up in their own performance that they really aren’t noticing you. And even if you do goof up and say the wrong thing, the worst thing the person listening is thinking is: “Oh yeah. That happens to me, too.” Like that slip on the ice that will inevitably happen this winter, we’re usually primarily worried if anyone saw us. Even if they did; they’d just be thinking: “Glad it wasn’t me this time.”  Slow down, really think about the content of what you’re saying, and give your self a break when things don’t come out of your mouth exactly how you wished they would.