Around a year ago, I did something that felt a little crazy. I started renting an external office and completely disconnected my home internet.
The reason was simple: my kids needed more space, so my home office became another bedroom. At first, I tried moving my desk into my own bedroom, but that… did not work. I realized pretty quickly that just like my kids, my business needed its own space to thrive.
So, I rented a space. My office is actually my neighbor’s studio apartment—literally 30 seconds from my front door. My official working hours didn’t change, and since I already lived a mostly tech-free life, I didn’t think moving my desk just a few steps away would make that much of a difference.
The unexpected magic of separating work and home
I was wrong. I honestly can’t overstate how much my life has improved since taking this step.
When I’m at work, I’m truly at work. There’s no getting distracted by a mountain of laundry, a sink full of dishes, or the latest book I’m reading. And when I’m at home, I’m actually home. I no longer find myself snatching time at my desk just to “check my emails for two minutes”—which inevitably used to turn into 30 minutes of (unbilled) work.
There have been plenty of other unexpected benefits, too. My desk stays perfectly clean all the time now, instead of acting as a magnet for stray hairbrushes, school books, and empty mugs. I’m farther away from the kitchen nosh cabinet, so I’m way more mindful about what I eat during the day.
And the impact on my mental health has been massive. Intentionally disconnecting from the world’s depressing news and every dumb opinion shared online has made me a healthier, smarter, and more resilient person overall.
Oh, and of course, there are drawbacks too: I actually have to get dressed to go to work. Honestly, that’s the only downside I can think of. 🤷♂️
How to manage a digital workflow with zero home WiFi
Now that I’ve gone through all four seasons with this setup—including holidays, life changes, wars, and a massive winter storm that fried my office router—I can’t imagine ever going back.
When I first shared this setup with my email subscribers, the response was huge. People were incredibly curious, but had a lot of practical questions about the logistics. How do you run a digital business with zero home WiFi?
It’s really quite simple: work stays at work. I don’t even use a smartphone. (Okay, I have one tucked away in a desk drawer at the office to access Google Authenticator on rare occasions and power my business WhatsApp on my desktop, but that’s it!)
I don’t need to be accessible to my clients 24/7 just because my business happens to live on the internet.
Using offline tools for deeper productivity
When I’m at home, I rely on a beautiful notebook that is practically tethered to my hip to hold my life together. Every Friday as part of my power-down ritual, I print out my Google Calendar and paste it into the notebook so I can reference my schedule at home.
But my ultimate secret weapon for getting things done at home is Google Docs and Sheets offline mode. It is actually an incredible productivity hack to write completely offline. You don’t get distracted by incoming notifications, and you can’t fall down a rabbit hole switching tabs just to “look up that one detail.”
Even better, you can write when and where you feel most creative, instead of when you happen to be at your desk. Now that it’s summer, I like to take the laptop into the backyard on balmy evenings, and write or brainstorm in my offline Google doc while the leaves rustle around me, insects buzz, and the filter in our Intex pool gurgles happily—making me feel like I’m sitting in the countryside near a running brook.
Because offline mode saves all changes locally, I just bring my laptop to the office the next morning, open it up, and boom—all my offline additions seamlessly flow into my desktop computer.
The exact schedule that makes it possible
Of course, a setup like this requires incredibly strict boundaries around time and childcare. My main working hours are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and this school year my first child arrived home at 1:15 p.m.
I also head over to my desk one or two afternoons a week so I can be available for live meetings with my US clients while my husband or pre-teen watches the little ones, and I go back once they’re all settled for the night to get in another hour or two of work.
Since my office is just one flight of stairs up from our apartment, it’s easy to pop in for internet-dependent personal tasks—like quick banking tasks, adding funds to the grade schoolers’ bus cards, or printing out coloring pages for the littles.
While I try super-duper hard not to look at work stuff during those moments, I can’t promise I’m always perfect at it. 🙈
Dealing with the temptation to escape and procrastinate
People have asked me if I ever feel the itch to use the internet as an escape, and the honest answer is: absolutely.
It’s an issue in two different ways—wanting to escape the drudgery of housekeeping at home, and wanting to escape challenging projects when I’m sitting at my desk.
I first realized I was using work as a psychological escape from home life several years ago. Self-employment can be insidious; it becomes your entire identity if you aren’t careful. Working with Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman of Connected for Real was incredibly eye-opening for me here—she helped me identify this pattern so I could start setting healthier boundaries, which eventually led to moving my office out of the house. I still sometimes feel antsy at home, like my head is still at my desk, but writing my thoughts down in my notebook is usually enough to help me return to being present with my family.
The procrastination side of things is much harder to handle. The minute a task gets challenging, I automatically turn to procrastinate. There have been days where I wasted two hours at my desk and felt terrible because my time here is so limited.
To break that cycle, I worked with ADHD coach Alana Stern, who taught me how to actually notice that procrastination itch when it arises, rather than just blindly giving into it. Working with Alana helped me learn to sit with that uncomfortable feeling instead of immediately clicking away.
To back that up, I installed a strict content filter that blocks 99% of distraction. I’ve also implemented other tech tools to help with that, like I discuss in this post (from 2022!).
Now that the easy escapes are gone, I’ve trained myself to pause and tease out why I feel the itch to procrastinate and what I need to do to release it—whether it’s breaking down an overwhelming task, deeply breathing to release anxiety (hello, living in a conflict zone), or just getting up from my desk to rest my eyes and move my legs before I get back to work.
The filter also helps me maintain work boundaries by letting me set a strict 10:30 p.m. internet shutoff. My goal for year two is to gradually move up my curfew until I’m 100% offline from 6 p.m. through the next morning.
All this is definitely a learning and growing process, but it’s making a massive difference.
But… how do my clients manage the lack of constant access
The biggest pushback I get on this lifestyle is from other business owners who worry about client emergencies. They ask, “What if a client needs to reach you immediately?”
For me, it comes down to your chosen business model. I refuse to be on call all the time. I did that for many years as a virtual assistant, and the constant accessibility was incredibly stressful. Like Michael Gerber teaches in his E-Myth series, being always on is the technician’s approach, not a business owner’s.
Over the last few years, I’ve intentionally shifted my business model. I offer pre-scheduled consultations or fit specific client projects into dedicated time blocks.
Most importantly, I stopped dealing with emergencies. I explicitly tell my clients to hire a VA to handle day-to-day troubleshooting because that is not a service I support. My clients know my official hours and know that if something comes up, it will wait until my next available slot.
I was only able to move my office out of the house once I had pivoted away from putting out client fires and into non-urgent consulting. And that’s also been part of my business and personal growth.
Overcoming the fear of big business investments
At the beginning, paying $450 a month for an office felt like a scary financial commitment that I wasn’t sure my business could handle. But looking back after a full year, it was the best investment I could have made for both my business growth and my life goals.
That being said, every business and personal situation is completely different. I have the distinct advantage of living in a society where nobody expects me to have a smartphone or even text messaging in my personal life, which made this transition significantly easier. These choices are mine, and while they wouldn’t have worked for me in earlier stages of my life and business, they are exactly what I need right now.
I’m not here to hand you a one-size-fits-all rulebook. My goal is simply to encourage you to be entirely intentional about the choices you make around your business boundaries and technology use—whatever that looks like for you.
The key is to stop feeling like “you have no choice but to do XYZ” just because everyone else is doing it.
Making these kinds of structural shifts can feel terrifying. But when you are intentional about your boundaries, that’s exactly what unlocks the next level of growth.
What’s that one scary decision you’ve been putting off? Consider this your sign to choose it on purpose.
Go for it.
