Your home working environment

For many, the idea of working from home conjures up ideas of lazy lie-ins, long lunch breaks and thoughtful, ponderous moments of reflections. You can go to the shops in the middle of the day, buy off-peak gym membership and not have to deal with the mood swings and temper tantrums of your boss. However, it is not always this romantic and idyllic.

Many people that work from home find it incredibly dull. There is no human interaction. You can get distracted by the most mundane of activities such as cleaning the kitchen and ironing, just because you don't have someone checking up on your progress. In most cases, you are more productive, but when boredom sets in, there aren't any colleagues to distract you for five minutes before you continue to slog on.

There it is important to make your home working environment as appealing as possible. You need to have plenty of light to keep you awake, your desk/chair/computer set up needs to be arrange so as not to strain your back and you need to take regular breaks away from the screen to keep focused. Two hours on with 10 minutes off should do it. Plus, make sure you still have some human interaction during the day, or else you might go crazy or become a Facebook addict.

If you are considering starting afresh and working from home in a new career, then good for you, it does have many advantages, being your own boss is only one of them. However, invest time and money in making your home office as conducive to work as possible. Don't think that sitting at the dining room table will work; you need a designated office space.

Converting a shed is ideal as you can feel that you have left the house and likewise, when you finish for the day you don't bring your work home with you. If you need some money to make these changes to kick-start your new career, one of the best ways to raise the cash right now is with a loan.

With the Bank of England's interest still at a record breaking low of 0.5%, now is the time to borrow. Santander currently has some of the best rates on loans on the market, with rates starting at 8.9% for loans of £7,500 to £14,950. This easily beats the competition from HSBC, Natwest and Barclays.