13 Basic Tips For Successfully Working From Home!
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- Dress yourself for how you want to feel in your day.
What you wear impacts your day SO much. For me, if I want a productive and successful workday, it benefits me to wear a cute outfit and slap on some makeup. Because if you feel good, your attitude will reflect in your daily activities. You can still wear comfy clothes that look and shape your attitude. - Write a list of things that need accomplished.
I use this strategy for work and home, making two lists the day before. After all, I have things I need to get accomplished at both places. Keep both lists at your workstation in order for them to be accessible to you throughout the day.
- Limit cell phone activity during work hours.
It is so easy to have your phone accessible to be able to jump on it to look at social media, play games, online shopping, etc. This not only really takes away your focus of your professional job, but gets you totally sidetracked and out of routine. Before you know it, you are down a rabbit hole of looking at your phone for hours instead of working. I’ve found this makes me drowsy, tired, and feeling lazy which prevents me from wanting to be productive at work one I try to get back on track.
- Be here now.
This is my go-to line! Be present and be in the moment of what is going on. Your co-workers are giving you their time whether it’s through a meeting, call, or email. Be respectful and don’t waste their time. be present, be in the moment of what is going on. - Get blue light glasses.
I highly suggest buying blue light glasses. I have noticed a total difference in strain of my eyes, feeling less tired, and reduction in stress headaches. I have a cheap pair of glasses that I purchased and I also had blue light lenses put in my actual glasses figuring I then would always have blue light lenses available. - Specify office hours.
It is so important to keep a set work schedule of start/end times and to stick to it. It becomes easy to get swallowed up in your work and before you know it, you’ve worked 10 hours in a day. You will find you work more at home than in the office since you don’t have the water cooler talk or cubicles surrounding you with constant conversations.
It becomes very easy to become addicted to finishing the task you started when working from home. That’s a great value to have, but be realistic, you need to be able to stay fresh and not overwork. - Schedule breaks and lunch.
Step away from your desk or computer and do not overwork! Make sure you are taking time away to get away from your desk. This will help your mental status, clarity, and you will be more productive in the end. For some reason when we work from home we tend to feel guilty for taking a break. It’s ok to take a break and to take a lunch- EVERYDAY!
Since it’s easy to get caught up in work, a good reminder is by setting an alarm on your cell phone or a reminder in your work calendar. You hear the alarm or see the notice; you know you need to step away for the amount of time you have allotted.
- Use time wisely.
Once you have decided to take some time to refresh yourself, I recommend using your time wisely. Do something for you, do something to check off an item on your personal list that you made, do something mindless to set your mind free for a few minutes. This can include laundry, preparing dinner, washing dishes, taking a walk around the block, going for a short run, watching part of a TV show- the possibilities are endless; however, you just need to stay disciplined enough to come back to work in a timely fashion. - Have your own space.
It’s very important to have your own workspace and be able to shut the door or tune out your office when you are not there. You won’t be comfortable if you go to bed staring at your work computer and only need to venture a foot out of bed in the morning to go back to work. You should really try to not bring work ‘home’ with you after office hours. You need boundaries and need to be able to shut work off.
- Keep your office area or desk tidy.
I would recommend keeping your desk and surroundings as tidy as possible. It helps you in feeling more put together and in a routine. When your surroundings are a mess, you tend to feel like a mess yourself. - Make do not disturb signs.
If you are lucky enough to have a door on your office, place a sign on your door as an indicator for people to know when they can and cannot enter. This is so hard for kids to follow, but again, you must set rules. For myself, I have no door on my office, so I use a piece of paper and tape it to my monitor that faces outward- when it says “In meeting” everyone knows to hush and stay away! - Set rules and communicate.
We often assume kids, spouses, neighbors, whoever it might be just understand that we are working from home and need to be accountable. Oftentimes they don’t understand that at all! Communicate with your people about the expectations during your office hours and set rules that need followed. Sometimes a quick talk becomes a great reminder. - Find a way to decompress.
One of the hardest things is to finish a workday and then move straight into family mode. There is no more decompression time of driving home to release that work stress or frustration, now you only have the amount of time it takes to move to the next room. I have found if I don’t take some time to switch from work mode to Mom mode, I tend to make everyone else around me miserable since I haven’t had that divide and decompression time.
Find something to do. For me, the best way to separate my work before ‘coming home’ is to go for a short jog. I don’t do this everyday, but when I don’t, I find other things to do instead like running an errand, working in the garden, going for a walk. Regardless of what it is, just find something because it’s not fair to yourself or others to be grouchy just because you can’t forget about your work day!