Hi, my name is Danny, and I'm a telecommuting addict. I connect to the Internet dozens of times a day just to check my e-mail--all three accounts. My idea of relaxation is reclining in my easy chair and surfing the Web on the laptop.

I was at my worst when I worked from home full-time for a couple of months after a dot-com layoff. I worked all day and still felt compelled to check e-mail messages throughout the evening. The unfortunate result was less time with my family.

The very reason I enjoyed working from home, in other words, was undermined by the tools that let me do so.

Welcome to telecommuters anonymous

Anyone who has telecommuted is familiar with this issue. A November 1999 survey by the American Management Association noted that 57 percent of telecommuters work at home before or after traditional business hours. And the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society earlier this year reported that employees who use the Internet even minimally work longer hours at the office and at home--even if they are not telecommuters.

"The good news and bad news of telecommuting and working at home," says Gil E. Gordon, a telecommuting consultant and author of the soon-to-be-published book, Turn It Off: How to Unplug from the Anytime-Anywhere Office Without Disconnecting Your Career, "is that you get to live and work under the same roof."

But Gordon and other experts familiar with the challenges of telecommuting insist that there is hope. With a little self-discipline, we addicts can regain more control over our lives.

Drawing lines in the carpet

The first step is to establish physical boundaries between the work and "play" areas of the home. Having an actual home office, preferably one with a door you can close when necessary, is ideal. But folding, portable screens--what Gordon calls a "virtual door" and a "visual and spatial separation"--is another option.

Punching the virtual clock

Setting time boundaries is equally important. Telecommuters often have the luxury of flexible hours, but that luxury can become a burden. If you want to start work at 5 a.m. or quit at 10 p.m., fine. But working every hour in between or every day of the week is another matter.

"To be a good teleworker," says John Edwards, president of the International Telework Association and Council (ITAC), "you have to be a good starter. And you also have to be a good stopper."

Gordon's advice: Set specific work hours, just as if you were working at the office, and keep them sacrosanct. Resist the urge to take the company cell phone or laptop on vacation. If you feel compelled to work at night, make a deal with yourself that you won't connect to the Internet.

And build time off into your schedule. Gordon, for instance, tries to keep one weekend day work-free. "It's amazing how refreshing that can be," he says.

For that same reason, telecommuters should build breaks into their day. Office workers take their walks to the water cooler or to the Starbucks down the block, and people who work at home should avail themselves of similar disruptions.

Time for the children...and yourself

If you have children, take them to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Or reserve time to play with them when they get home. Read the newspaper. "Make a point of leaving to have lunch," says ITAC executive director Gail Martin. Or do what Gordon sometimes does: Cook the evening meal to trigger a "psychological separation" from his work downstairs.

Even better, build some exercise into your daily routine--a morning jog, an afternoon bike ride, an evening at the gym. "It's a brain-cleansing activity," Gordon says. And you don't have to worry about offending co-workers if you don't shower immediately.

Gordon knows a computer programmer who set the alarm on an old clock radio for every 90 minutes and took a break from the computer after each alarm to combat the splitting headaches he endured from writing code for three hours straight. If all else fails, Gordon says, consider the "draconian solution" of having your spouse set up an access word on the computer that prevents you from working outside certain hours.

Jack Nilles, a consultant who coined the phrases "telecommute" and "telework" in the early 1970s, says that, in his experience, an alarm clock or a spouse who serves the same purpose works for at least 90 percent of people who simply cannot leave work at home on their own.

Setting the ground rules with your boss

Finally, telecommuters may have to learn to just say no to their bosses. Even those who can muster the self-discipline to turn off the technology sometimes have to turn it back on because of demands from above. "The managers frankly need the most training" when it comes to implementing telecommuting, says ITAC's Martin.

The best way to address that concern is up front, says Nilles. "The thing to do," he says, "is make a specific agreement with the employer ... as to which hours you are to be available [by cell phone and pager] and which hours you actually will be working."

Gordon adds that it is also important that the telecommuter not reinforce bad management. Do not reply to late-night and weekend requests as if they are normal, he says. Do the work as ordered, but then take the first opportunity to remind your supervisor of the ground rules of telecommuting. "Deal with the issue and try to confront it in a positive way," Gordon says.

Employers, in fact, have a responsibility not only to avoid making unreasonable demands of their telecommuters' time but also to make sure the employees impose self-discipline. "We don't want to create electronic sweatshops," Martin says. "You have to teach people to lift their eyes, to move around, to actually plan breaks."

In his nearly three decades of study of telecommuting, Nilles says the greatest challenge he has found has been "the incipient workaholic issue." But he and other telecommuting experts agree that it is not an insurmountable obstacle. You can work at home and still have a life.

So if you are (like I am as I write this) sitting at your computer or talking on your cell phone, take that first step to freedom from technology: Hit the off button, and just walk away.

K. DANIEL GLOVER is managing editor of National Journal's Technology Daily. He works from an office during the day, but still occasionally checks his email in the evening.