How to work from home

I have been working from home for over 6 years with occasional travel.  It has been an adjustment but I prefer it to a daily commute.  I feel like the hour to two hours I spend commuting could either be spent working a bit more or with my family.  I will say that there is a great benefit to meeting in person when it comes to resolving issues and developing stronger relationships with your colleagues. 

 My years of working from home went from working in an apartment, then working in an apartment with a child, and now working in a house with multiple children. Some things got easier and other got harder with these changes.

In early 2020 a large portion of the population got thrusted into working from home and it has been a great challenge for both employers and employees.  Some of us must now be prepared to work an extended period at home or might now be permanently assigned to work from home.  In this article I will point out some of the key factors in making working from home work.

Time Management

Wake up early

An Early start to your day helps for your productivity and your health.  If you can get up early enough to get in a workout and at least an hour of work done before your first meeting you are already winning.  It is tempting to just sleep in until right before your first meeting, but you will eventually feel like there is not enough time in the day.  If you have kids waking up early and being productive will allow you to spend quality time with them towards the end of your day.

Keep your same routine

Pretend like you are going to work every day. You don’t need to get fully dressed but wake up, shower and eat breakfast like you normally would before work.  If you wake up right before your first call then you have to schedule your morning routine activities during the morning work hours.   You never know what each day will bring, and you could get pulled into multiple meetings or troubleshooting sessions that won’t allow you to sneak in your morning rituals.

Make sure your coworkers understand your home schedule

We all have different schedules and sometimes work in different time zones.  There is a general accepted period of 8am to 6pm or 9am to 5pm that we are expected to be available.  Do not be afraid to block out time on your calendar each day for an hour for lunch and hour for dinner.  I have worked on projects where we had team members on the other side of the world, and we all had to work around each other’s personal time.  Sometimes you will have to eat dinner for an hour and jump right back onto meetings but make sure you take that time each day.  Your family will be understanding that you are working long hours but if you have kids you should at least try to see them before they head to bed.

Space management

Keep a separate space in the house

This can be tough if you live in a larger city with limited space and even harder if you add kids.  If you have limited bedrooms, pick a corner of a livingroom or a bedroom as your workspace.  Train your family that this is your work area.   For those who tend to spend most of your day on the phone pick a bedroom.  If you are using part of a larger room move the furniture around to establish a virtual boarder for your work area.  Invest in some good noise canceling head phones so that others are not as distracting to you in that area.

Go out different places

I would regularly go out to coffee shops if I had busy work to change up the scenery.  Not having your regular home distractions around you for an extended period of time can really help you focus in on completing a long task.  This is not just limited to indoors, if you live in a warmer area or if it is nice out and you have good laptop battery life, you can spend your time outdoors.  Use your car, you don’t always need an area to sit just wind down your windows and move your seat back.  Depending on your mobile plan you can just use your phone and some carriers have a mobile hotspot as add on to existing mobile plans.  This is all easier if you have a backyard, all you would need is an outlet or extension cord.

Personal Management

Listen to appropriate music

Do not listen to music that you would dance in the mirror to.  This will lower your production in the long term.  Same goes for background noise or talk shows that will occasionally have you engaged.  You want to listen to instrumentals or slow music which will allow you to maintain focus for longer periods.  Same goes for background noise, pick something slower like the Animal Planet or History Channel to keep on in the background.

Take breaks

This ties in with time management but this is important for your overall health.  You need dedicated breaks to reset yourself and to get a break from the screen if you are in front of a computer. There have been many times I have just kept working and I look up and it is way past lunch time.  You don’t need to take breaks on a strict schedule but don’t allow yourself to get to extreme levels of hunger or eye fatigue.

Pick a time to finish everyday

When you were in the office it was easier to cut yourself off and go home.  Now that you have 24/7 access to your work it can be easy to just try to complete more work than you normally could.  Working more than your regular hours will cause you to burn out.  Now that you are at home, you don’t have that commute to somewhat decompress before you deal with your home life.  If you are single you should use this time to try to interact with real people just to maintain your social life.

Working from home can be great for some people but it takes constant management and sometimes tweaking. Make sure you feel like you have had an optimal day and don’t just base that on the amount of work that you have completed.