Working from home is not for the faint of heart. It takes some getting used to and mental training to be successful at it! I’m sharing my tips for working from home today to help you transition to working from home and create a routine and environment that will set you up for success!
I was going through my Instagram highlights last week and came across some tips for working from home that I filmed 25 weeks ago and it made me laugh to see how optimistic I was about how long this whole pandemic/quarantine was going to last and how this year in general was going to go. Oh to go back 25 weeks ago and tell myself what all was going to happen over the next six months – I probably wouldn’t have believed myself!
In any case, I thought it would be a good idea to document those tips in writing, and expand on them a bit – since many of us are still working from home for the foreseeable future and maybe need a little reset now that school has been thrown into the mix too!
Tips for Working from Home
Get Dressed for the Day!
First and foremost – I highly recommend getting dressed for the day! I know it can be tempting to stay super casual and work in your pajamas and no bra, but I promise you, you cannot imagine how much more productive you will be if you stick to your morning routine and get dressed, do your makeup (or at the very least your skincare routine), have your coffee and breakfast, all before you sit down to work. Having that routine will not only help your productivity but it will also make the transition back to working in an office easier and you’ll avoid that “ughhhh i have to put on a bra again???” moment.
(If you need ideas for what to wear when you’re working from home, check out this blog post.)
Set up a Schedule
I think it is such a good idea to set up some kind of structure to your day. When you are working in an office, you automatically have a little bit of build in structure around your arrival time, any meetings you have scheduled, your lunch hour, your morning coffee break, etc. It can feel a little chaotic and overwhelming from home when you don’t have those built in markers of time, so sit down with a pen and some paper and make yourself a schedule for each day. Set a start time and a finish time, dedicate blocks of time throughout the day for your meetings, checking emails, working on actual work like projects or presentations, a lunch hour, and a coffee break.
I would also recommend trying to work your schedule around your kid’s school schedules, especially if they are leaning heavily on you for help with them, like younger kids need. Don’t try and schedule all your meetings when they are going to be doing assignments that need your assistance, for example. The point of having some structure in your day is to relieve as much stress as possible, not add to it!
Another reason a schedule is a good idea is because, given the opportunity, it can be very easy to immerse yourself into your work and never come up for air. Even at your office, people stop by and want to chat for a minute, you have to get up and make yourself some coffee, or you head to someone else’s office to talk and get a little break that way. If you’ve got a few of those little five minute breaks in your day it will keep you from getting sucked in and never coming back out!
Also, if you need to, share this schedule with your coworkers and boss. Over-communication in this area will set up realistic expectations from them – they will know that you are actually going to take a thirty minute lunch and walk away from your desk to eat it. You cannot have a conference call from 10-11 because that is when your child is scheduled for a piano lesson and you have to be there to facilitate it.
Two final things when it comes to your schedule: eat lunch away from your desk AND set a closing time and shut it down.
Have a Dedicated Office Space
Do not, I repeat, do not work in your bed or on your couch. This is a one way ticket to getting nothing done (or, at least feeling like you got nothing done!). Set up a dedicated office space in your house that you ONLY work from. This will go a LONG way in separating work duties from home duties. I used to have my office in our living room, out of necessity, but it made it really hard to shut things down for the day. Having a physical space that is dedicated to working only helps create that boundary for you so that when it is time to shut things down, you can physically leave the space, just like you would your office, and change gears into home mode.
It doesn’t have to be anything special or elaborate. It can just be a card table with a lamp on it in your guest room. But I would recommend making it welcoming and somewhere you look forward to going every day, because you have to anyways. Add some fresh flowers or a couple of pictures or set up a little coffee station next to it. Buy yourself a pretty plant to keep on your desk – whatever little thing will have you excited to sit down in there and stay focused on work!
Set Aside Chore Time
If you’re anything like me, you’ll get distracted very easily by the things around you that are getting neglected while you work. For as long as I’ve been exclusively working from home, I’ve also felt like it was solely my responsibility to make sure the housework is done as well, because I’m here to do it (while Chris is working in an office). I don’t mind doing it, but I had to create a way to keep it from distracting me all day long too, or else I’d be in the kitchen doing dishes when I really should have been writing a blog post.
So I started setting aside a half hour in the morning and an hour in the evenings to dedicate to getting things around the house done. I start a load of laundry first thing in the morning, throw it in the dryer at lunch, and fold it right before I start dinner. I clean the kitchen after breakfast and then straighten up the house. I also start my diffusers. Once those things are done, I can focus for the rest of the morning on getting work done. I try to shut everything down between 3-3:30 and then I finish the laundry and put it away, start on dinner, and clean the lunch dishes up if I need to. The key is just to make a time to do those things, if they will distract you, so that you can stay focused on work without feeling guilty that it’s not getting done.
Grace upon Grace upon Grace
Whether you’re working from home because of the pandemic or transitioning into a new job or career that gives you this option, you’re going to have to give yourself a lot of grace while you’re getting used to this new schedule. Things will probably be a little messy at first, but you’ll learn over the first few weeks what kind of boundaries that you need to set for yourself in order to stay focused, productive, and employed! So give yourself a couple of weeks to strike that balance before you get frustrated with yourself!
In addition to yourself, you need to give your family a lot of grace too. When I first started working from home, it took a few months for me to make Chris understand that unless I was sitting in front of my computer, I was not making any money. He would ask me to go to lunch all the time or “run up to the church real quick” which was NEVER a quick trip. After a few really frustrating instances, we finally had a conversation about the value of my time and where it was best spent. Some other things to consider having discussions with your family about are your office hours, when you’re available for things and to talk to, or when it is okay for house things to happen around you, like watching TV or having friends over.
When your office is at home, you have to remember that even though it is your work space, it is also where these people live, and you can’t expect them to just stop living there while you’re working. That has probably been the hardest thing to balance over the years, and especially lately since now Chris and I are both working from home. It is difficult because you feel like someone has come into your office and turned on the television as loud as it will go while you’re in the middle of a meeting. So that is where the grace comes in – instead of just exploding (you know, like I generally do ha!) have an open conversation about it.
Are you working from home these days? If so – what would you add to this list that has helped you make it successful?
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