This is probably the first question I get when I tell people I work from home. “How does that work?,” they say. “When I’m home I get nothing done.”
Well, it’s not always easy, that’s for sure.
Here are a few tips for how to be productive while working from home:
- Try to keep hours. It’s oh-so-tempting when you first start to sleep til 10, work for awhile, go grab lunch, then work again around 9PM, etc. Doing that will make you feel like you never have a break, even though ironically you’re taking lots of breaks, and will really inhibit your productivity. Even though it’s less fun, you really should keep the hours that businesses in your industry keep. If most people are open 9 to 6, you should at least be available, up, and ready to answer phone calls / emails during that time. It’s better for your business and it’s better for you to have some sense of schedule.
- Leave the house once. If you end up staying home for hours and hours on end and not leaving, you can definitely end up feeling very blah and out of touch with the world. I try to leave the house even if it’s just for 20 minutes or so in the morning to run up to the post office, bank, etc.
- Take a shower! Again, tempting to stay in PJ’s all day, but that also tends to make you feel like you haven’t woken up and kind of in a fog. Not only that, but should you get a “Hey, can you meet me over here really quick?” phone call, it’s not going to sound good to either (a) say no because you haven’t had a shower (b) show up in your PJ’s anyway (c) be super late and show up with wet hair because you tried to play it cool and take a shower lightning fast.
- Clean when you’re cleaning. This is one of my bigger issues. It’s distracting if the house is not in order so you can find yourself feeling like you need to clean it up before you can work. If you have serious tasks to get done, that can be an issue. Try to plan when you clean and stick to it. I’m still working on this one. A pin has been floating around on Pinterest and I’m going to try to use its suggestions (Monday vaccuum, Tuesday dust, etc.). Not only that, but we got a Roomba yesterday (our vaccuum died) so now I have a little robot slave to take care of the vaccuuming! :-)
- Find a favorite spot to go. Sometimes the house is messy and you just do not have time to deal with it, or you’ve been there all day every day for three days and you’re stir crazy. If you have that option, which most of us do so long as we have a laptop and a WIFI connection, pick up that computer and go somewhere. Almost all coffee shops have internet connections. I have a few favorite spots around town and it’s always nice to be around people. Plus, I’ve made great connections that way, both new friends and new business acquaintances.
A great website that covers these kinds of topics is Working Naked. It has a great funny but informative spin on the work from home topic.
Have you ever worked from home? Know what it’s like or wish you could? Some people I meet wouldn’t want to because they say there’s no way they could be productive. What about you?
