A Guide to Working From Home

By
Emily H
-
Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

A lot of people nowadays work from home full time, or at least part-time. If you need some tips on how to maximize your work from home situation, check out this guide.

Distance

Even if you love to work at your kitchen table or in your living room, give yourself mental distance from the physical place where you’re working. If you’re in the kitchen and see that there’s a build up of plates in the sink, forget about them. Pretending you are in a separate space will save you a lot of time and will help you focus better.

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Productivity tip: The one tab rule. Close off all other apps. . You know what it’s like. Start working on your website/blog/word doc/[insert software here] and then you see the email notification pop up. . “Oooh, must head off to see who’s replied or what juicy nugget of spam I’ve been delivered…” . Ten minutes later after email and several others have been read. “Oooh, I’ll just reply to so and so while I’m here.” . While emailing you realise you’d like to include that attachment but you just need to tweak a couple of things. . Several tweaks later. About to send email. . Facebook message. . “Oooh, that might be important.” . Back to browser. See interesting sponsored ad for that thing that helps you with that thing you really struggle with… . One email sign up and download later. Back to inbox. . “Oooh, still need to send that email.” . Wonder what was working on before starting that email… . One tab on the browser, people. One tab. . . . #productivitytip #distractions

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Work Surface

If you do work at a table or desk, make sure that it’s at least organized and clean. This will not only get you in the right head-space to work, you can also feel like you have room to put a mug or a snack on there and really get down to business.

Office Hours

Give yourself exact times where you want to work so you can balance your other responsibilities at the same time. Whether you love to wake up early and get the day starting or do most of your work in the late afternoon, find the exact times of day when you’re most productive and don’t do anything else during that time.