Whether you’ve been downsized, outsourced, caught the entrepreneurial bug, or just couldn’t take a corporate environment any longer, there is a big difference between working in an office and working from home. Here are a few tips for how to successfully navigate the latter, if you’re new to doing so.
Pick a spot
Create a dedicated work space where you won’t be interrupted by other members of the household (including pets!). If the family isn’t accustomed to seeing you during a work day, they may forget you’re not really “at home” and clamor for your attention.
Choose a spot where you won’t be distracted by household chores. Working in the kitchen may be light, bright, and convenient, but it can also syphon your attention from data to dishes.
Equip your space with everything you need to efficiently do your work: laptop, phone, chargers, calendars, paper, pens, files, and other supplies that support your role. Make it a welcoming space, with a plant, nice lamp, pictures of family, or a diffuser for focus-enhancing aromas (like citrus or mint).
Set work hours
If you’re an employee, agree on what your schedule will be when working from home. Honor your work time and your home time. The laundry, dishes, food shopping, and litter box can wait until after work hours, and that one email or phone call could probably wait until the morning.
Know your peak productive time. Some people love the dark quiet of the early morning, while others come alive at 4pm. Depending on your job, you may be able to tailor your work hours to your most productive time of day. If your clients or suppliers are based in another part of the world, the flexibility of working at home may make it easier to do business globally.
Set boundaries with friends and extended family. Working at home is still working. You may need to make it abundantly clear that you’re not available for “chit chat” phone calls or someone popping over for tea or to borrow a tool.
Do remember to take breaks! It’s very easy to get sucked into marathon work mode, so set a timer to remind you to stand up, walk around, drink water, and clear your mind at regular intervals.
Dress the part
If you went to work in a public place, you probably wouldn’t wear pajamas and bunny slippers, would you? Although it’s super comfortable and very tempting, try to avoid doing this at home. When you’re at work, you’re at work, and it’s important to dress appropriately. You’ll feel professional, motivated, and that you’ve set a boundary between work and home. If a surprise video conference comes up during the day, you’ll be ready for it.
Be organized
Projects and deadlines and reports, oh my! It can feel overwhelming to work at home, without the externally imposed structure of an “office.” Getting and staying organized can help greatly.
Make a list each day of what needs to be done, both personal and work tasks, so they don’t buzz around in your head like an angry swarm of bees.
Prioritize each task. You can rank them by importance with A, B, C, D and then in order with 1, 2, 3. So something ranked A1 has the highest priority and has to be done first.
You can also use a quadrant model to identify your highest priorities. Two that I like are the Important vs. Urgent model, attributed to several sources, including Dwight Eisenhower and Steven Covey, (https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/habit-3.html) and the Solve-It Grid, created by Tamara Rosier, PhD (https://www.resetadhd.com/blog/secret-time-management).
Ask your boss or other stakeholders in a project for clarification on how they view the priority of a task or project, so you can gauge how much time and attention you need to devote to it.
Live by your calendar. Identify the system (electronic, paper, or a combination) that works best for you, and schedule everything. That includes standing appointments and recurring tasks. Share your calendar with the people who are invested in knowing where you are and what you’re doing.
Focus on one task at a time and see it through to completion. Multitasking is a myth. We don’t actually concentrate on multiple things at once. Instead, we very quickly shift our attention from one thing to another. This can feel like you’ve been busy all day, but you don’t know what you did, and nothing got accomplished. Do whatever works to stay focused during work hours. (One trick I use when I need to devote my complete attention to something: earplugs. They literally and figuratively block out everything else, even if no one is around. Result: exponential productivity.)
Create routines
A routine is a repeatable, duplicatable series of steps to accomplish a given task. Being organized means creating systems for what we do and how we do it, i.e. routines. This is essential when working from home. Having standard operating procedures for personal and business responsibilities ensures that things get done and don’t fall through the cracks.
Use checklists, flowcharts, storyboards, or whatever works to document the steps required to complete a task. This makes it easy to track the progress of a project for work and delegate household chores to other family members (like teaching kids to do their own laundry, so you’re freed up to do other things).
Speaking of delegating, I use the mnemonic DEAR for teaching time management. DEAR stands for Delegate, Eliminate, Automate, Re-evaluate. Running tasks through this filter helps to determine if you have to do something yourself, or if someone else is better equipped to handle it; if something doesn’t have to be done at all; if something can be set to happen on its own; and if it’s time to decide if the task still fits your life or work.
Working from home can be so very rewarding, allowing for great flexibility and increased productivity. Taking the time to create a supportive physical environment, as well as time boundaries and expectation parameters, paves the way to work-at-home success.