Working From Home Tips To Follow For Beginners

 

Working from home needs to be approached carefully. And if you are like most people, you have probably gotten into the habit of living and working in completely separate places. In fact, unless you were home schooled, you have probably been keeping your “home” and “work” lives separate ever since kindergarten.

It can, therefore, come as a shock when you have to start sharing that home space with work. With freelance working on the rise, and many businesses now asking employees to work from home, you may find yourself in a situation where the lines between your work and home lives can become blurred. Oftentimes this reaches a point where when you are at home, you always feel like you are at work and find it hard to switch off.

If you handle things carefully, though, this sort of scenario can be avoid.

 

The Most Important Place In Your Home

When it comes to working from home, the most important place in your home is you home office. Ideally, this should be somewhere you can use for just work, like a spare bedroom or outbuilding. At a pinch, your bedroom can also be used as an office, but you should avoid areas used by other people in your household like the kitchen. Even if you live alone, don’t turn your living room into an office because, subconsciously, you associate this space with relaxing and this can make it hard to avoid distractions during working hours.

Make a note of the necessary equipment you are going to need. Obviously, you are going to need a computer. It is best to get a desktop computer rather than a laptop as it will have a bigger monitor and if the keyboard breaks you can simply get another one and plug it in instead of having to send the whole thing away for repairs.

You will need a desk to work at and a nice, comfy chair to sit on. If you decide to use a standing desk, make sure you can raise your monitor to a sufficient height so you are not having to stoop over to look at it.

It is also very important to get a separate phone line. When clients know you use your home line for work, some will have no qualms about phoning you at ten o’clock at night to discuss a project. You can get the phone company to install a separate landline, get a separate cellphone for business calls, or use a voice over Internet protocol, (VOIP) like Skype. In fact, using Skype-In is a perfect solution because your clients can dial a landline number and have the call routed over the internet to your computer or cellphone. Regardless of how you do it, be sure to divert all calls to voicemail when you are out of  hours.

 

Keep Your Working Hours Regular

When you are working from home it is vitally important that you keep regular working hours. IF you are working remotely for your boss, you’ll have to anyway!

Even if you are running your own business, it is important to separate your working time from your home time. This is why it makes sense to have a separate home office because when your working day is done, you can simply shut the door and forget about work.

Have a schedule and stick to it – just like you would at the office. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stick to the dame old 9-5, but there should be some sort of regularity and limit to the number of hours you put in.

To help put yourself in a business frame of mind, dress like you would for the office and wear different clothes every day. There is a great temptation to sit around in your pajamas all day when you work from home and don’t see anybody. Avoid it at all costs. Wearing business attire and fixing your hair and grooming just like yu would if you were going out to work, helps to concentrate the mind.

Keep the working week separate from the weekend. If yu don’t usually work on Saturday or Sunday, don’t be afraid to say no to client who dump a whole load of work on your last thing on Friday and expect it to be done on Monday.

Of course the best thing about working from home is there is no commuting, so you will have extra time. Use it wisely. Spend more time with your kids and family.

Routines

In additional to keeping regular working hours, it is also important to establish a routine to get you in a business frame of mind.
When you work away from home, you have a routine. For starters, you leave home. You may drive your car, walk to the bus stop or train station. Maybe you buy a newspaper or a cup of coffee. Perhaps you listen to a certain radio station while you are traveling.

When you get to work, there are usually certain things you do as soon as you get there and you do them almost without thinking. The same sort of things happens at he end of your working day, culminating with you walking through the door when you get home.

When you work from home, the lines can get blurred. So it is a good idea to do certain things at the beginning and end of each day to start and end your working time. For example, I work from home and have done so for many years. My working day starts when I turn on my computer. I always check my emails first. That signifies the start of my working day. I can then act on those emails from clients and customers and devote my time to working.

At the end of the day I turn the computer off and write down a list of things I’ve worked on that day in my diary. That’s it, working day done.

Boundaries

Just because you are working from home doesn’t mean you are ‘at home’. If can be tempting to do jobs round the house during working hours. Don’t When you don’t set clear boundaries, your home and working lives merge to the point that when you are at home you are always at work. And when you are at work you are always at home.

When you first start working from home, you will easily be distracted and be far behind with your work. To catch up you will keep working until late at night and before you know, you will be burned out. That is why you must start to setting boundaries and treating each weekday like a proper, working day.

If you have kids, you will need to set rules for them when they are off school. If your kids are young and would go to daycare if you were working on a office, there is no reason why they shouldn’t go to daycare now. Older kids and teenagers can, of course, have more autonomy, but you should impress upon them that your home office is strictly off limits and yu are not to be disturbed unless it is an emergency.

With proper boundaries in place, you are likely to become much more productive.

 

Never Stop Learning When Working From Home

When you are working around other people you will always see what they are doing and learn from them. But when you are working from home those opportunities just aren’t there and it is easy to get out of step with new ideas.
That is why it is so important to make the effort to keep your professional and business education up to date.

Take every opportunity to connect with others in your industry. One way of doing that is to schedule a time to participate on a niche forum site. There are plenty of them online, just do a search for them.

Likewise, you can participate in niche discussions on social media like Facebook. Be careful here, though, as it is easy to become distracted.

There are many sites online that offer distance learning courses where you can brush up your skills and get new ideas. They are a worthwhile investment in terms of both time and money. It is also a good idea to join a professional organization related to your industry. Many of them tun courses and seminars at very reasonable rates. Often there are conferences, conventions, and networking events too. This can be particularly useful if you are running your own business from home.

 

At The End, Don’t Do This!

Working fro home can be great. There are so many things you can do that would be impossible on a normal working environment. However, there is one thing you don’t want to do, and that is to become isolated.

It is very easy to cut yourself off from other people, after all, you are not going into the office every day and hanging around. So remember to socialize. Oftentimes coworkers are friends too and friendships can wither if they become neglected. Make the effort, you won’t regret it.

It can also get lonely being home by yourself all the time, so instead of just making a phone call, talk to colleagues an via Skype, Facetime for example. Seeing a friendly face as will as earing a friendly voice can have a great impact on your morale. Above all, have fun working from home and enjoy escaping from the daily commuter grind and rat race.

In this blog post we have talked about how to set up your home office for maximum productivity. We have also talked about why you should keep regular hours and the importance of setting boundaries.

But, one important thing I was not talking about is that you must remember to take some break. Take a break just like you should have done on a regular work. There is a software called Workrave which has a screen pop-up to remind you when it is time to stop. For the day or just for a break. You can download it for free here.

 

 

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