I was listening to a wickedly funny yet pertinent and amazing post yesterday from Geoff Burch.  To cut to the chase, he asks why there are so many cold callers annoying people in their homes with set scripts that are usually irrelevant, if not insulting.

Hold that thought, and link it to a blog written by executive business coach and mentor, Tim Jackson. He ponders why most of us are so prone to distractions. As he bluntly puts it, it is our own responsibility to identify those issues and remove them, pronto.

I have lost track of how many people over the years have asked me if they should open an office or continue working from home. After all, it can cost a lot of money to fit out additional premises and pay the rent. Well, no argument there.

Maybe there is a deeper, hidden concern. If you take up on extra facilities, your are going to have to be more responsible for your work. You will be forced to go out and find extra clients in order to pay off the extra (“and wasteful”?) expenses. Hmmm!

Personally, it took me ages to come to a decision that I needed an office. I was getting by. I had learnt to deal with the distractions – most of them – in the home environment. I could meet people in quiet – or semi quiet – at coffee shops.

I then dilly-dallied, as I struggled to find the right area of Jerusalem to set up shop. Far too slowly, I realised that the all neighbourhoods had lousy parking and lousy traffic problems. Comparison was not easy. So, I chose the industrial park closest to where I lived.

And today?

Since moving, and also after getting used to the change, my productivity has increased by 10s of percentage points. It is difficult to pin point precisely why or how. However, I know of other freelancers who have had similar results.

The point is as follows. Before moving, the trader is so rooted in how much extra the change will cost them that they minimize the potential benefits. And yes, those costs are important to understand. Far more vital is the uplift. We forget that we are seeking to become more professional, and that is how others will see us. And that should result in lots of lovely extra revenue, way above the additional expenses.

So what was your original question?