Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast. Today's tip is This is Laura. This is a before breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is about how to work from home with kids around.

I've worked out of home offices for years,

but my cardinal rule has always been that work is work work and so just as if I were in an office I need child care for kids who are too young to watch themselves

I make sure to tell people who'd like to try working from home that it's actually not a great way to save

money on child care. I mean yes you'll need fewer hours if you don't have a commute

but you'll need another caregiver or family member to watch your children or

you'll need to enroll them in daycare or mostly use

school hours. Otherwise you'll feel pulled in multiple directions and constantly

distracted. With many offices closing these days due to concerns about the coronavirus,

lots of people are trying working from home.

The problem with this is that many schools and daycares are also closed,

and so these experiments in remote work

are going to be far from ideal.

That said, it's also just life and we need to deal with it.

My kids are home from school for the next few weeks.

And there are a few ways I've found and that maybe you can find too to preserve time to focus and spend time with your kids and keep all of you from going insane.

If you've got young kids and you've got a partner who's in the same boat, your best bet is to swap hours.

One of you gets up and works from 6 a.m. to noon, the other works from noon to 6 p.m.

Given how distracting offices can be, my bet is that if you truly focus during your six-hour shift,

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