(MONEY Magazine) – MOST MORNINGS, SHELLY COMES, 45, FEEDS THE chickens at 6 a.m. before booting up her PC an hour later. As a senior quality-control trainer earning an annual $60,000 or so with Hewlett-Packard, she works three weeks every month out of her 55-square-foot garage office on her family's 29-acre farm in Garberville, Calif. One week a month, she drives 260 miles south to work in Hewlett's Mountain View office. That schedule allows both Comes and her 73-year-old mother to stay on the farm.

Welcome to the new world of telecommuting. If you've been daydreaming about polishing a proposal on your patio but you're not ready to launch a home business, then remaining on staff while working full time or part time from home may be for you. Six million Americans now telecommute an average of 1è days each week, up from 4.7 million in 1990. And Find/SVP, a technology research firm in Ithaca, N.Y., predicts that 14 million employees, or 10% of the work force, will be telecommuting by 2000. With the growing dependence on PCs, modems, on-line services and sophisticated phone-messaging systems, about all you can't do at home is work on an assembly line.

You may be out of sight of your supervisors and colleagues, but telecommuting is no longer considered a shortcut to corporate oblivion. A full 30% of today's 6 million telecommuters collect benefits and more than $75,000 a year, according to IDC/Link, a New York City market research firm, and almost three-quarters of them are male. "Lots of men are fed up with long drives to work and the distractions in the office," says Monmouth Junction, N.J. telecommuting consultant Gil Gordon.

Nonetheless, if you want to work a day or two from home, "you must convince management that they get a bottom-line benefit," says Alice Bredin, syndicated columnist and author of The Virtual Office Survival Handbook (John Wiley & Sons, $16.95).

Comes, for instance, had been with Hewlett-Packard for 15 years before requesting her current schedule in November 1994. She was responsible for 20 staffers who help departments work more productively and meet quality standards. Comes had already developed a coaching-by-phone program, but she had to convince her bosses that she could do the job from home. Comes surveyed her colleagues and found the support she needed. Their endorsement and her own work-at-home action plan won over her managers. "We're now developing phone conference sessions," says Comes, "so people around the country can be trained at the same time."

If you want to build a compelling case for telecommuting to your boss, follow these guidelines:

Divide your daily tasks into work you can do at home and what you must accomplish in the office. Use the list to determine how much time you can spend working at home.

Make sure your boss doesn't feel threatened. "A lot of managers feel their role is to oversee workers," says Gordon. "If that's the case, point out that managing telecommuters frees the department head to spend time thinking, planning and budgeting."

Check home-office tax laws and your local zoning regulations (see the main story to learn more).

Assess what you need at home. Can calls be forwarded? What equipment will you need? Be prepared to buy your own. Typical costs for a PC with a modem, telephone lines and a spare desk and file cabinet: $3,000 to $6,000. Otherwise, ask the company to spring for equipment. Of course, you can always return it if you leave the company or change your schedule.

Suggest a trial telecommute of one or two days a week for about two months.

Keep your supervisors aware of your accomplishments, advises Joni Daniels, a Philadelphia management consultant. "Stay visible by coming into the office for some meetings." And speak up.

Last, be realistic. Telecommuting may permit you to coach Little League or pump up at the gym during the time you used to spend riding the freeway. But don't think working at home can eliminate the need for child care or meeting deadlines. You'll be just as busy. The trade-off is the flexibility you gain. This winter, for example, "we ran out of propane gas," says Comes, "and I had to devote most of a day to getting the heating system fixed. But then I did my work at night." Don't forget to emphasize devotion like that to your boss too.