Olympics 2012: How To Get the Work-From-Home Advantage (PICTURES)

Olympics 2012: Get the Work-From-Home Advantage

Soho's shopkeepers might be complaining bitterly about the absence of trade, but for many of those who are working from home during the Olympics, life won't be peaches 'n' cream either.

As many as 1.5m workers are working from home during London 2012, reports the Daily Mail.

But forget watching every race, home workers regularly struggle to keep their work-life balance on track, according to Maureen Gaffney, author of personal improvement book Flourishing.

While the prospect of a commute-free day in your domestic haven is alluring, the reality is that working at home is harder than you may think, she says.

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Working from home makes it harder to avoid distractions

She tells Huffpost Lifestyle: "Alongside the usual need to concentrate on the demands of work, you will face the challenge of having to make choices about how to structure the day; fend off endless distractions; and resisting the temptation to do just about anything except work.

"These challenges require exercising self-control and all draw on a common inner resource of mental energy that is easily depleted – that is why we can only call on this inner reserve as little as 5% of the time. So in order to flourish at home you’ll need to remove as many demands as possible on your willpower."

Here are Gaffney's tips for flexing your self-control muscle and making sure you don't miss any Team GB medals, while getting all your work done...