Working from home can be quite the productive day if you plan your day correctly. Granted it’s easy to get distracted or to feel disconnected from your job.
Small changes like getting dressed and making your bed can lead your day of working at home to success.
Here are my tips for working from home.
1. Have Clear Goals for the Day
The #1 thing you can do to setup your day for success is to have clear goals of what needs to be done. Whether it’s a project management tool or jotting down a todo list on a piece of paper either can be the key to a productive day.
2. Get Dressed in the Morning
This sounds simple but you can quickly set your day up for failure by not getting dressed. Showering and getting dressed puts you in the mindset to be alert and awake. If you’re laying in bed all day with your laptop it’ll hard for your brain to get into work mode and will likely lead to you being groggy all day.
3. Communication with Your Coworkers
I have found tools like Slack can be extremely helpful with communication and staying focused. Email can feel cumbersome at times so it’s nice to have a way to quickly engage with your coworkers. Just remember to have times where you aren’t checking messages throughout the day since it can be distracting if you check it too often.
4. Have Reliable Wifi
This may sound obvious but if you have poor internet at your house it will lead to disruptions.
5. Create a Dedicated Place to Work
The couch may look appealing since you’re at home but having a specific spot to work can lead to productivity. It doesn’t have to be an entire room but just having a small area in your home that you dedicate to work will put you in the right mindset.
6. Know When to Log Off
A lot of jobs will have your coworkers and managers contacting you after work hours. Set clear boundaries by not reading messages after you log off. If you start to answer emails all day and night you’ll set the expectation that you can always be contacted. This makes it extremely hard to disconnect from your job since your home is your office.
7. Get Out of the House
Coffee shops, coworking spaces, and even libraries can give you a great place to work out of the house. All of the distractions of home like chores and TV are easily eliminated by leaving the house.
8. Enjoy the Flexibility
One of the huge benefits of being at home is you can attend to things you normally couldn’t. It may seem counter productive to throw a pile of laundry in or taking a jog during your lunch break. But I have found doing small things out of the work norm has made me love working from home.