Working from Home Tips

This is it. You’ve decided you want to start working from home. You’ve saved up several months’ worth of income from your current job and you’re just about to quit. Before you do, you want to be sure you have everything you need to get the best possible start.

What are some top work-from-home tips?

Have a set start time and end time
Video chat instead of email
Create obstacles to social media use
Take a real lunch break
Track your day and week with productivity apps
Strive for that work-life balance

Do you want extra tips for ensuring your first year of working from home gets off on the right foot? Keep reading, as I’ll expand on the points above as well as share more great info.

1. Choose a Start Time and End Time and Stick to ‘em

When you had an office job, you followed a set time each day. Perhaps it was a typical nine-to-five or even an eight-to-five. Regardless, you woke up the same time every weekday, left at the same time and got to work to start at the same time. You also left at the same time.

While there’s no boss to chide you for being late to your work-from-home job, you should follow the same loose schedule. Maybe you do the nine-to-five thing because you’re used to it and it works. You could start at 10 and finish at six. Whatever it is, choose a loose start and end time (plus or minus 30 minutes) and do your best to stick to it.

2. Video Chat or Call Instead of Emailing All the Time

Once you first start working from home, you’ll greatly enjoy all the peace and quiet. There are no bosses breathing down your neck and no coworkers trying to pull you into watercooler conversations. It’s just you, your computer, and beautiful silence (unless you have kids, in which case that’s a whole other matter entirely).

See also: How to Work from Home with Kids

Eventually, the novelty of having all that silence wears off. Suddenly, you realize you’re only really chatting with people at the beginning and end of the day. This can make you bored or unhappy working from home.

See also: I’m Bored Working from Home

One of the best ways to alleviate loneliness is to stop sending emails all the time. Pick up the phone and chat with your client or boss. Video chat if you can. Even a single conversation in the middle of the day can get you through that silent lull until the kids are out of school and/or your spouse comes home.

3. Create Obstacles to Limit Your Social Media Use

Are there any bigger time-killers than social media? Whether you scroll through Facebook to see what your friends are up to or you watch a few videos on YouTube, it’s easy to get sucked in. Remember, when you work from home, there’s very rarely anyone telling you to stay on task but you.

That means if you’re the type who tends to waste copious amounts of time on social media, you need to do something about it. Otherwise, you won’t ever get any work done. You could try using private browsers on your computer so each time you want to use social media, you’d have to log in (and remember your password). If private browsers don’t appeal to you, then just log out of Facebook and the like the next time you’re on there.

Of course, there’s always your phone or tablet. For productivity’s sake, you should keep these away from your desk. Put them somewhere across the room. This way, if your phone rings, you’ll still hear it. If you want to check Instagram or watch YouTube, though, you’d have to get up to do it. Sometimes that’s all it takes to stay on task.

4. Take a Lunch Break and Use It for Lunch

Lots of experts advocate for spending your work-from-home lunch breaks on doing laundry or other household tasks. I disagree. Unless there are other loved ones you have to check in on (like a baby or a dog), then use your lunch break for lunch.

Yes, that seems to be a novel idea today, when more and more people like to use their lunch breaks for multitasking. Doing so is a waste of time, it turns out. Cleveland Clinic and plenty of other publications support that we humans aren’t really as good at multitasking as we think we are. A very small portion of the population, 2.5 percent, can multitask; the rest of us just think we’re good at it.

Trying to multitask if you’re outside of that narrow 2.5 percent means your mindfulness, learning ability, attentiveness, and functioning all decrease. At best, that can lead to less productivity. At worst, you could be in a dangerous situation where you think you can text and drive and end up in an accident.

Next time you take a lunch break, just eat. You’ll still get everything done you need to do for the day, I promise. You might even have time to spare once you drop your multitasking attempts.

5. Use Productivity Apps Daily, Weekly, and Monthly

If you find yourself struggling with productivity, use the array of apps that are at your fingertips. Google Calendar lets you manage your events and appointments. It’s especially handy if you already have a Gmail account tied to your job.

Trello is a free app that lets you visualize your projects from start to finish. You can move them from one category to another until they’re done. This ensures nothing you start ever accidentally gets left in the lurch.

Slack is another free app for teams that lets you communicate via its app or website. You get live-action instant messaging with coworkers, bosses, clients, and other important parties.

Everyone knows Skype, which also has chatting. You can use it for video calls or phone calls, too. Evernote is handy for taking and managing notes, 1Password is a secure password management tool (that’s a paid service), and Google Drive or Dropbox can be used for submitting assignments.

I recommend that, with whatever area of your productivity suffers most, look for an app that can help you with it. Many apps today are free, and those that aren’t won’t cost you too much money.

6. Strive for a Work-Life Balance

Being more productive doesn’t only let but you get more done, but it helps you finish up your day faster. That’s important when establishing a work-life balance. Yes, the term “work-life balance” has been a buzzword for years, but it’s something to take seriously in 2019.

Considering that you’re essentially your own boss now, you call the shots. If you work late or on weekends, it’s often on you. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but other times you have to decide to put your mental health and wellbeing at the top of your priority list.

When you work at an office, it’s a lot easier to be done for the day and truly mean it. You associate your office with working and home with relaxing. When you work from home, the lines become a lot blurrier. The place you relax is now the place where you work. This allows what people call work to creep to come into your life.

If you can’t tell where your work life ends and your personal life begins, you’re a victim of work creep.

There are a few ways to enjoy a work-life balance if yours is lacking:

Follow the advice I wrote about earlier. Start and end your day at set times (give or take 30 minutes).
Have a dedicated place in your home where you only do work. An office is best, but even a corner of a room where you have a desk is good.
If you can’t have your own home office, then work at a café or even rent a coworking space. This way, like an office employee, you can leave the building to signify you’re done working for the day.
Have a policy that after six or seven p.m. you won’t respond to incoming emails unless they’re urgent. The rest can often wait until morning.
Know that it’s okay to say no. As a work-from-home employee, you might think you always need to be available to take on any assignment that crops up. This is your attempt to prove your worth, but it can do more harm than good. You need to take time to decompress or you’ll burn out.

7. Wear Real Clothes

You wear your pajamas for sleeping, not for working. When you lounge around in your PJs all afternoon, it doesn’t set you up for a very successful day.

According to Reader’s Digest, the clothing we choose to wear can alter both our emotions and our moods. For example, wearing exercise clothes can give you the jolt you need to get out of the house and get moving.

More interestingly, a Social Psychological and Personality Science study found that when people dress in formal attire, they reported feeling “in control of the situation” and “significantly more powerful” when doing cognitive processing tests.

So yes, even if you’re all by yourself for the day, put on that blazer or suit and tie. You’ll feel better and ready to work, and that’s what matters.

8. Limit Errands to After Work

Before, I mentioned how you shouldn’t take your lunch break and use it for multitasking around the house. This goes for duties and tasks outside of the house as well. Sure, it’s tempting to run errands in the middle of the afternoon, but could you do it at an office job? If the answer is no, then treat your work-from-home job the same way. Wait until after you’re done work for the day to get out and do your shopping.

9. Treat Yourself to Office Tech

Chances are, you already have a laptop, but what else fills your office? If you’re going into business by yourself or working from home while still part of a company, you’ll need some tech essentials. I’m talking about your own phone system (if you do a lot of correspondence), a tablet, and even a desktop computer with a big-screen monitor.

You’ll also need a reliable Internet connection. If you’re working outside of the home, make sure wherever you settle has a strong Internet with few risks of outages.

Then there are the software requirements, such as word-processing programs, email programs, spreadsheet makers, invoicing software, and even customer relationship management or CRM software. Don’t forget your antivirus program so your computer(s) isn’t at risk of failing you when you need it most.

10. Have the Right Mindset

Finally, my biggest tip for work-from-home success is to have the right mindset. What do I mean by that? You have to treat your at-home job as a real job because it is one.

If you roll out of bed at 11 a.m. most days, wear your pajamas, and dart out in the middle of the afternoon to run errands or watch TV, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. You’re not taking your job seriously, and in return, you could fail at it.

While working from home isn’t for absolutely everyone, by following the tips I laid out above, you’ll be in great shape to have the best work-from-home experience possible.

Working from Home Tips