Anyone who has worked from home knows that the situation is both a blessing and a curse in terms of your productivity. On the one hand, you maximize productivity because you can work on the schedule that suits you best while eliminating commute time and the need to leave the office when something comes up at home. On the other hand, you can easily be distracted by house chores and family members and the simple desire to linger in bed so no one is making sure that you get into the office on time. Most people would prefer to work from home if they could make it work but these negative aspects make it impossible for the situation to work out long term for a lot of folks. To realize the dream of working from home either full-time or part-time, you simply need to put some things into place that will allow you to maximize your productivity in the home office.
The first thing that you need to do is to make sure that you’ve set aside a specific part of your home that is only for the home office. Whether this is an entire room or just a corner of a room, there needs to be a designated working area for you to stay productive. You shouldn’t work from your bed or your couch. At the very least, you should have a desk that you’ve designated as only a work space. This helps to make you feel like you’re at “the office” even though you’re working from home. If you’re in a position to create a separate home office then it should ideally have nothing but office furniture and supplies in it and it should also have a door that locks. While you can certainly create a comfortable space, you do want a place that’s professional enough to be conducive to work – no bean bag chairs or big screen TVs in here.
Once you’ve set up a proper work space, you need to do the hard work of creating a schedule. Most people hate this; the whole reason that they left the office was to have a more flexible schedule. While flexibility is okay, it needs to start with a plan. And when you’re working from home, you actually need two schedules – one for your work day and one for your house chores. This way, you don’t get sidetracked from work by needing to take care of your chores. What your specific schedule is will vary depending on the rhythm of your household and the requirements of the type of work that you do. However, it should be a schedule that is basically the same every week and that is reasonable enough to accommodate work and home tasks. For example, you may want to wake up early to spend an hour doing work tasks and then take a few hours off to get the kids ready for school and go to a yoga class before returning to work for a few hours. Alternatively, you may want to put in 3 10 hour days so that you can have four days off. Find what works for you but then stick to it.
Finally, you need to put some rules in place that you, your clients and your household members all know are strictly to be followed. These rules are designed to create boundaries that further separate work from home and allow you to be productive during working hours. Rules may include when people may call you for work and for fun, what times you are available to your family and even when you take breaks. These rules help you to avoid puttering around the house, answering personal calls during working hours and getting stressed out because clients are calling at all hours of the night. Run your home office like a business and you can be your own best boss for a long time to come.
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Really solid advice here! It’s amazing how many people who work from home wind up cheating themselves out of proper work time. And maintaining a clean office is crucial to productivity. While I’m all for adding a bit of personality to your office design, too much of it usually winds up acting as a distraction imo.