For those of us who are trying to work successfully from home, we often find ourselves wondering how on earth we can be productive without the structure of a traditional office environment. While it's wonderful to skip out on any sort of commute, wear whatever you want, and hang out at home all day with your dog, working from home does come with its own set of trials and tribulations.
You're in familiar surroundings and you don't have to spend an hour getting home, but what have you really achieved?
Here are ten things you need to do in order to work from home like a boss.
1. Give yourself routine
If working from home is new to you this is going to take a little while to adapt, but the sooner you set parameters for the working day the better. Know where you're going to work: this might change from morning to evening depending on how light shifts around your home office – let's call it a hoffice. Make sure you're at the desk by a set time and embrace getting up early; this is ok if you're the one who decides you have to. It feels amazing to have nailed a ton of work before 10 am.
Map your day according to how you think you'll feel if you complete a certain set of challenges and let your measure of success revolve around tasks, not time.
2. Get up, shower, put clothes on
Don't work from bed. Beds are for sleeping and other kinds of magic, let them be precious and special in their purpose. Wash the night away before doing anything. Getting straight to work because you can, doesn't mean you're on fire, because after a while you're going to start itching. A sweaty home worker is a silently disgruntled home worker.
Blast your head with water, get fresh and don't forget that you're still a human even if you don't have to spend your day with others. Now, put some clothes on. Wear what you like as long as it's not pyjamas, but wear something. Now, you're ready to get started.
3. Focus: read, don't type over meals
This is about honing your focus and ability to juggle different actions. If one of your hands is holding a spoon or a fork or a knife or a jar or a mug or a piece of fruit, you simply can't type properly. Stop trying to do everything at once. Open up a couple of blogs, articles or news pieces and read – this is stretching for your brain before you start doing cartwheels towards your own work.
4. Prioritize: Write a To Do list, yesterday…
Thinking 'what do I do now?' is the first step to potential boredom, and boredom kills dreams. Don't be a dream killer.
To do lists sound like they were invented by a cruel master, but they're the key to self-motivation. This is your list and the summation of the day you've decided you'd like to have. Take ten minutes before you sleep every night to make the next day's list – give yourself something to be excited about. Prioritize no more than three biggish tasks, and don't be afraid to have a secondary list on a different page with things that need to be done, but not necessarily tomorrow
Know what you have to achieve and give yourself a time-frame to realistically do it well.
5. Set the musical mood
Your working environment is the key. Be in a room with lots of light. Move your working space and direction around until you're happy. Don't have your back to the room, face it.
Working in silence is a distraction so get Spotify premium (other services are available) and find a Focus playlist. If you're writing don't choose tunes with lyrics, you'll only be tempted to sing along.
There's something special about letting your mind switch off from everything other than what you're focusing on.
6. Destroy distraction
This is the difference between a good day and a bad day. Put your phone out of reach when you're working or at the very least put it on Airplane Mode. A WhatsApp notification is distraction. So is a new match on Tinder. Or a new tweet or Instagram or Facebook or advert or reminder. Stop it!
Save direct messages for break time and give your focus a chance to be relentless. There are a couple of self-control apps that will physically stop pages like Facebook opening during the times you choose.
Basically, if anything during the day takes your eyes off the prize at any given moment make sure that you find a way to stop it happening in the future.
7. Work on, work off
If you're running for a whole day with no stops to refuel, drink or rest, the person who chooses to run for only 45 minutes each hour will go further than you. Be a tortoise and rest your way to victory.
There is a bunch of ways to do this, but here's a starter: at the beginning of each work session set your phone timer to go off in 50 minutes. As soon as it beeps, stop working for ten minutes. Stand up, move around, drink water, and breathe. Try not to look at a screen but if you must, this is your window to check and reply to WhatsApp. Then after ten minutes set the timer, and get going again. Three or four hour-long sessions might feel productive, but you'll do more if you have multiple rests in that period. Be smart, not relentless.
8. Get Outside
Don't forget to exercise. You don't get it done on your bike commute any more and now that you're in charge of your own destiny there might be a feeling that if you stop working you're harming your chances of success. Here's a newsflash: getting pale and porky in your home office is just going to make you tired and, in the long run, ill. Get some vitamin D, ride a bike, go read on a park bench, smell fresh air. Spend at least one day a week out and about. Go and see real people and get inspired by conversation.
For all the freedoms of working from home, if you don't make it count that freedom might one day have to get shelved. It doesn't have to be this way. Be good to yourself, work smart, learn as well as do and base it all on creating a habit to get things done. If you try and cook an elephant every meal, you'll end up never eating* so break down the big stuff into smaller chunks and tick off hundreds of little tasks a day. Build momentum, be nothing but a doer and when you finally get to bed at the end of the day, make sure that you've made it count.
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