If you’re thinking about starting a business that would allow you to work from your home, know that you could be making a deal with the devil. In return for trading in the craziness of a commute, the soap operas of your coworkers, and the passive-aggressiveness of that one supervisor, you’re agreeing to monitor and manage your own work production. If things pan out you could be singing “Hallelujah,” but if you have difficulty with the whole self-management thing, it can be a sweat-filled nightmare. Here’s three skills you’ll need in order to avoid roasting in your own, self-employed Hades.DisciplineWith work from home jobs, discipline is the equivalent to monogamy in marriage. In the beginning, the relationship is magical, electric: you’re excited by its novelty. Then a few months pass and the inspiration fades. Now comes the prolonged period where you don’t exactly feel like developing the business, but you’ve made this commitment to it.Enter discipline. By possessing the ability to independently produce quality work in a timely manner regardless of whether you want to or not, you’ll be able to work from home and not go into a stress-related paralysis from the stacks of projects, reports, deadlines, that are piling up around you.BalanceFidelity to your work, however, doesn’t mean monastic isolation. If you consistently coop yourself up in your home office, you can lose the ability to make competent decisions. Little else drains the brain of ideas and creativity like obsessive, mechanical labor.Obviously, this means you need to find a balance between work and play. For some, this may come easily, but for others it may take more trial and error. In the end though, the ability to regenerate your energies and passions for your home-based business through rest and relaxation will be essential to its success.Critical thinkingFinally, if you are going to start one of the many work at home businesses out there, you’ll need the ability to think critically. By choosing a home-based business, you are in effect isolating yourself. You can’t just pop into an employee’s or supervisor’s office and ask a quick question to help you gain clarity. Sometimes your employee or employer is 12 time zones away. Every five minutes, you have to single-handedly assess and solve problems.When you are able to determine the proper course of action with limited outside help though, you can then meet your deadlines and project requirements, and continue to build your reputation as a dependable worker. It can mean the difference between being viewed as someone who wears a halo or someone who has a pitchfork and bifurcated tail.