How many of you define boundaries in your business. I dont mean physical boundaries like workspace, family space, etc. I am talking about time boundaries. Do you ever set boundaries for when clients can contact you, can visit you at your home office or just annoy the heck out of you?

Lets look two different senarios:

Senario A: Your on a deadline for a client, there is a 20 page document full of tables and data he/she has thrown on your lap 2 hours ago and wants it finished today, asap and is willing to pay extra for this time. You are sitting at your computer and the phone rings, right when you are in the middle of setting up those tables for that most important data. You stop what you are doing, answer the phone and after five minutes of discussing with a telemarketer that really you are not interested in what they are trying to tell you, finally put down the phone then realise you have totally lost your train of thought on what you were doing for your client.

Senario B: You have a client who contacts you every day, all day, evenings or weekends, expecting you to be there at your phone all the time for him/her and tends to forget that you do have a life outside of your desk and computer. Do you feel that because you are tied to the phone for this client that your family/social life seems to be sliding by and that you are getting so tired lately that all you want to do after switching the computer off is go and sleep?

If either of these two senarios sounds familiar then it is more than time you looked at defining your time boundaries. Yes, it is ok to set boundaries for your time. In fact, more often that not it is more valuable to your effectiveness for you to set these boundaries, and in the long term more efficient for your clients.

Have a look at your working day - are you spending too much time on the phone to potential and current clients than acutally doing the work for them? Are you spending more time reading your emails and responding to them, than completing your current jobs? Set yourself some restrictions, it could be something simple like not answering the phone while you are working on a task for a client and letting the answerphone take the call for you or saying to yourself that you will only check your emails twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon and not spending anymore than half an hour during each scheduled timeframe.

Of course, when you set some boundaries, make sure to clearly communicate that to ALL your clients. If they have a hard time understanding what on earth you are doing then tell them that you're trying a new work routine that could save them some money (as a byproduct of your increased efficiency) and ask that they keep an open mind during the next month. They may moan and groan at first, but once they see for themselves how much smoother you complete their tasks, perhaps they'll try a similar approach to their work day.

Jo Walker is a successful Virtual Service Provider. Her business, thehomeoffice (http://www.thehomeoffice.net), creates Efficient, Effective, Online Solutions for SOHO businesses. She is also the Editor for The Virtual Summit, a montly newsletter produced for The Virtual Business Group (http://www.virtualbizgroup.com)