Anyone who has ever worked from home knows, despite the snide remarks from office-based colleagues, that it’s not a walk in the park (or an afternoon in front of the telly, come to that). Working from your kitchen table or spare room is just as hard as a day at your desk; the biggest difference is that no one believes you when you tell them that you’re busy. Getting the balance right is hard, as some of these examples of what not to do show.

Leave your work unattended. Pets, small children and mischievous flatmates can wreak havoc with your work, whether it’s accidentally deleting crucial spreadsheets or sending your boss “hilarious” emails on your behalf. “My cat is obsessed with typing on my laptop,” says Roxana Lawton, a business adviser at Business Support Solutions. “If I leave my desk he jumps on to it and enjoys tapping away on the keyboard. On occasions he has ended up sending unfinished emails to clients.” Her advice? Lock your computer every time you move away from it.

Tell people that you’re doing it. It’s probably best to make sure that your boss and immediate colleagues know, but beyond that you should keep quiet about your working arrangements. “When people know that you’re working from home they take advantage of it,” says an anonymous consultant. “People would pop around and not understand that I was actually working. A friend would come around, drop off her dog and ask me to walk it." One way of avoiding unwanted visitors is to decamp to a wi-fi-enabled café, but this too can have its drawbacks, says James Poyser, a marketing manager at Vodafone. One of his colleagues managed one very productive hour at a coffee shop before it was flooded with mums and their crying babies. “The boss chose that precise moment to call and it took some time to explain how the screaming kids in the background were helping [my colleague] to concentrate and get some work done,” Poyser says.

Forget the basics. You can’t work from home unless you remember to, well, bring your work home. “The thing that I forget to do is take the power cable for my laptop home,” says Ben Maynard, the director of Harvard PR. “I get the wi-fi going, start working and then halfway through the day the battery powers down and it all has to stop.”

Give people your home phone number. Hand out your work mobile details to whomever you choose but keep everything else private, the anonymous consultant says. “I had a client who knew that I worked from home, so when she was particularly concerned about a piece of work she called me about it – at 10pm on a Sunday. I told her that it wasn’t a problem and that I was there for her, but it upset my [now ex] partner.” Don’t be afraid to switch your phone to voicemail once the work day is done, she says.

Expect to get ahead. If you’re keen to climb the career ladder it is probably best to stick with the daily commute, according to research by Tom Redman, professor of human resource management at Durham Business School. “The more that people work from home, the more they miss out on promotions and career development,” he says. “Even though the systems are geared up to support [working from home], there are a lot of informal actions that determine it – meetings at the watercooler and so on – and that’s where the home worker misses out.”

Lose concentration (i).“A friend made the mistake of rewarding [himself] for a good morning’s work by putting on a DVD of 24,” Poyser says. “Six episodes and more than three hours later [he] emerged from the world of Jack Bauer, remembered the mountain of work [he had hoped] to crack through in the peace and quiet of [his] own home, panicked and ended up working until 11pm to catch up.” Working from home is a great way to get away from office distractions, he says, but you’ll be productive only if you remove home distractions as well.

Lose concentration (ii). Focusing too intently on your work can have its downsides too, Maynard says. “One of my contacts was working from home when he decided that it was time for lunch. He went to the kitchen and turned on the deep-fat fryer to cook some chips when his phone rang with a conference call, which he took.” The call took a bit longer than expected; by the time it was done the pan had caught fire and his kitchen was so vigorously ablaze that the entire room was gutted, although the fire brigade did at least save the rest of his house.

Explore Career & Jobs

• Graduate / Management

• Senior Executive

• PA / Secretarial

• Public Sector

• Legal

• Recruiter Forum

• MBA

• Top 100 Graduate Employers

• Top 50 Women

• Best 100 Companies

• Careers in

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO