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You want to move back to an office? Are you crazy?

One of the biggest attractions for most people who come into this industry - after the money of course - is the chance to become your own boss and to work from home. In the beginning the thought of working from home is like a mirage on the horizon. The thought of never having to commute again, of being able to have more time with your family, of being able to dress down and never having to put up with the idiots at the plant or office is just plain irresistible.

When it actually does happen and you do start to work from home you find that all those benefits really are there. You don't have to put up with the idiots, you don't have to wear shoes or a tie or any clothes at all if that's what floats your boat. You can spend more time with your family and the commute from the bedroom to the office is over and done with in just seconds instead of taking hours out of your day.

Even though it might seem like a dream come true working from home does have its hassles and, if you're realistic, you will recognize the new problems you might face even before you make the move to being self-employed at home. Friends don't always understand that, just because you're working from home, you're not always available when they want to drop in for a chat.

If you have kids they don't always understand that Daddy or Mommy isn't always available to them now that you're at home. Your husband or wife may not understand that you need to be able to work uninterrupted. And you may not be able to avoid being distracted by your home environment either.

However if you can overcome those problems - and it will take some time to reach that point - then working from home can be an incredible experience. But it may not always be such an incredible experience, there may come a time when it loses its appeal. You may find that some time in the future you're wishing you could have some real separation between home and work.

Some years ago when I was writing about working from home I suggested that you really needed to have your own office in your home and to have that office fitted with a door that you could close at the end of the day. I suggested that closing that door at the end of the day was a symbolic gesture to shut your work away and to change your focus to your family and relaxation.

Over the years both Steve and I have had home offices where we could simply close the door at the end of the day but even though we did close the door and step away from work there was never quite the separation we were looking for.

And there is one other problem that few people think about when they dream of working from home. That problem is the isolation that comes when you're working by yourself.

That need for separation and the isolation is not something that everyone experiences and it's quite possible to experience one without the other. These problems are certainly not something that everyone understands either.

This morning I was reading a thread on a webmaster board that was started by a guy who was wondering when the best time was to start working from an office outside of the home. It was obvious from the replies that his thread received that some people didn't understand where he was at.

Some wondered why he would ever want to go back to working from an office. Others thought that the only reason he should consider renting office space outside of his home was if he wanted to employ people. But there are other reasons that make renting office space outside of the home something that may be right for you.

One friend of ours found that there were some serious commercial benefits in renting some office space away from home for his successful adult and mainstream online businesses. He found that when his mainstream business gained an office address more suppliers were prepared to deal with him than when he was working from home.

Others have found that they can be far more focused on work when they work from rented office space and some of the biggest solo operators in this industry work from office space rather than from home. They don't employ anyone, they could work from home if they wanted to but they see some real benefits in being able to separate work life and home life.

For me the move to some office space was more a matter of staying in touch with people. I'd worked from home since 1998 and for some of those years, because of what I was doing, there was no isolation. But after I gave up my escort business and concentrated solely on my online business it didn't take long for the isolation to begin to affect me.

So for me, three days a week in an office that we share with another business was good. It works for me and it even brings us more mainstream work because we suddenly have some visibility.

Of course it may never work for you and your business may remain home-based for as long as you remain in business. However, there are plenty of people out there who will find that the move back to an office really does work for them. For those people making that move back to an office is not a backward step. In fact, it's quite the opposite and it will help them to remain in business for years to come.

Just when the time is right to make that move from home and back to an office is something that really depends on the individual. If you are one of those who needs to move on to an office environment you'll just know and the longer you delay in making that move the more your business may suffer.