5 tips for working from home

Since coming back from vacation I’ve been working from home. At first I was like THIS IS AWESOME, I’ll sleep in, workout in the middle of the day, get my tan on, wear yoga pants all day… and so on. Then I remembered that working from home still means working.

Those initial few days were obviously difficult for me in terms of productivity, especially because I did not have a designated working space (I probably should have looked at the online tips for getting a she-shed built at the earliest), which made it even more difficult for me to get easily distracted. I felt like a complete mess since I was so easily sidetracked, woke up later than usual for me, watched much too much TV, and woke up late. I don’t understand why though, because when I was a student back in Seattle, living alone in my rental home, I could get work done! Of course, I have a lot of responsibilities now. Get the WiFi set up, clean the house, repair the taps, and every other issue that comes my way. Back then, my landlord had the best rental property management company in Seattle, and they took care of everything. Well, independence does come with its own ups and downs.

But I’ve since become more disciplined and regimented in my approach to working from home. I made some changes for the time being. My dining area is partly my workspace. I pulled over an extra table that I had left in the garage. Right now, I don’t have a plug point nearby, maybe I should get an electrician malvern to get that fixed. Or, I’ll wait till I decide on my she-shed! I don’t know yet. This space is not perfect, but I’m definitely getting more work done now.

Set appointments for yourself on gcal.

At my previous jobs, I was in the habit of setting appointments with other people on my work email gcal. I knew I wouldn’t miss an important meeting or phone call because I always kept my calendar open on my browser and I’d get a pop-up reminder 10 minutes before an appointment.

As cheesy as it sounds, I’ve been setting appointments for myself now. Because of the way my job is currently structured, I’m doing a bunch of different things on any given day. To keep me on track I put each thing I want to accomplish as a different appointment for myself throughout the day and work on it during that allotted time. This means I need to ensure that nothing interferes with my workflow, so that I can finish the work on time. In some cases, I will need to test my internet speed, turn off my cell phone, prepare my meals in advance, and avoid obvious pitfalls that will take a considerable amount of time.

I also add in lunch breaks and if I know I have a hard stop at the end of the day because of, say, dinner plans or I’m seeing a show. Giving structure to my day has been surprisingly helpful.

Lunch should be a break

I’ve worked positions that both have a luxurious hour long lunch break that everyone is required to take, and jobs where you munched at lunch while sitting at your desk. I’m so much more productive when I have a real, work-free lunch break, and this same is true for me at home.

During that time I completely stop what I’m doing, leave the computer in my bedroom, and make lunch while watching mindless TV. It ends up being a short break and I’m ready to get back to it after eating.

Silence your cellphone

Captain obvious over here but seriously, DO IT! In an office environment no one wants to be that girl (or guy) who’s always checking their phone. At home there’s no one to judge you or yell at you. If you really need to power through something, turn that phone on silent, stash it on the other side of the room, and just say no to instagram.

Stick to normal hours

So in theory I can work whatever hours I want.

I realized really quickly that working out in the middle of the day was just not realistic for me. It became a total time suck walking to my workout, working out, walking home, taking a shower, and next thing I know I wasted 3 hours.

I’ve been sticking to relatively normal business hours which means working out in the morning. Instead of taking brutal 6AM or 6:30AM classes like I previously had to, I’ve been treating myself to the slightly later start times of 7AM or 7:30AM. No matter what, I still workout first thing in the morning. Then I don’t have to waste all this awkward excess time in the middle of the day.

Get dressed up

Or at the very least I haven’t been wearing my ratty workout clothes and pajamas around the house. I still wear yoga pants fairly frequently… because wearing yoga pants to work wouldn’t be weird for me. Every day I do make an effort though to wash my face, put on some makeup, do my hair and look like a decent human being even though the only person I see between the hours of 9AM-5PM are my doormen and the Starbucks baristas.

Something about wearing real clothes instead of pajamas makes me feel more productive and stops me from spending the day on the couch watching Sex and the City reruns.

Anyone else work from home? What tips do you have for being super productive even when you’re working out of your own home?