I have worked from home and remotely ever since 2014. When I first started working at home I was excited for the freedom working on my own time would provide. It wasn’t long before I started to see the not so fun side of working from home. The line between work and home started to get extremely blurry. I would work when I was supposed to be spending time with my family, then to make up for it I would pause work for days at a time to relax. This cycle was not healthy for me, my family, or my work. I thought I was going to have more freedom and less stress instead my stress grew.
I began building systems within my home to help me get more work done and enjoy the remote working benefits without bringing the negatives to my family.Â
Here are somethings I did that caused a dramatic improvement
Physically Seperate Work from Home
At the beginning of working remotely, I didn’t have a dedicated work space. Where ever my laptop was, that was where I worked. Living room, bedroom , back yard, dinner table etc. I worked everywhere! Once I realized this I started to set dedicated work space. I only worked on the living room table. This took a little while getting used to but it allowed me to get my home back. My family knew if I was at my desk I was working if I was in other places I could interact. Now I have an official home office which is an entire dedicated room for me to work.Â
Digitally Seperate Work from HomeÂ
The second level of seperation that turned out to be very helpful was seperating my digital space work from home. As a techie and nerd, a lot of my hobbies live on my computer. As an entrepreneur so does my entire office. It was easy to get on the computer wanting to have fun and the subconcousily switching to work or vice versa. One thing that helped me combat that was using folders on my computer and separating my browsers. On google chrome, you can have different users based on your emails. One brower has my personal and hobby related login, another has my business. ( This is great if your work with various clients that require you to have an in house email )Â
Work Uniform
Working from home it’s very easy to just stay in your PJ’s. After weeks of working in my PJ’s, I started to notice how lazy I felt working in them. One day I started to get semi dressed up ( jeans and a tshirt) to work from home. This helped to rectify the situation instantly. I had created a new morning routine that consisted of “getting ready” and it put an extra pep in me to no longer feel lazy.Â
Setting work HoursÂ
When you first start working remotely it’s easy to just always work. Responding to emails at 2 am, creating newsletters at 4 am and more. This may seem like you’re maximizing your time and getting things done but it will bite you in the butt! When I was doing this, my customers started getting accustomed to me always being available. Then when I didnt respond to 10 pm emails they started to get upset. I quickly realized that setting work hours needed to happen and fast! My work hours are officially 9 am – 5 pm and sometimes 10 am – 6 pm. This works for my family and me so I have some kind of sanity at the end of the day. I often want to work longer but I remind myself that tomorrow is another day and things can wait. Set work hours…NOW! Â
Live by your Calendar
“If it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t exist”. This has been my motto for the past few years. I have MANY things on my plate. Whether it’s appointments for my family or it’s business meetings. My schedule is always full! So what I do is work strictly by my calendar! If it’s not on my calender I don’t do it. I have my google calendars all linked plus a physical calendar as back up. I also use the calendar service calendly to help me set appointments and keep everything on track.Â
Working from how and remotely is very fun and can be a huge benefit for your work and life. But if done the wrong way it can be a deficit.Â
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I’m currently working on a product that would further help remote workers, if you can take 2 minutes to take this survey for me that would be amazing!