Working from home is both a blessing and a curse. Certainly, it tends to offer a lot more freedom than working in an office environment but, as Spider-Man will tell you, with great power comes great responsibility. Without coworkers around — unless you invite some over, as Amanda Lee suggested in an earlier post on Task Blog — you’re in charge of keeping yourself organized and on task, even though nobody’s looking.
Here are some of the best ways I’ve found to stay on task and still enjoy all the benefits of not having to go into the office:
Keep Your Bed and Your Desk In Separate Rooms
This one’s not always possible in a smaller apartment, but separating your bedroom and your workspace is a good way to acknowledge the immensely powerful distraction of a comfy bed. I’ve had to train myself to avoid “just lying in bed for a few minutes” and waking up 4 or 5 hours later with no work done. Keeping the bed out of sight and out of mind helps a lot.
Close The Door
If at all possible, work in a room with a door you can close. The psychological impact of closing the door to indicate you’re working can’t be overestimated. If you live with kids, pets, roommates or a significant other, it also lets them know you’re working and and eliminates distractions. I’m borrowing this one from Stephen King’s excellent book On Writing, which contains plenty of good general advice that applies outside of being a writer.
Have a Regular Routine
One of the best parts of working from home is that you don’t have to keep a schedule. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, though, it just means you should keep one that works for you. It doesn’t have to be eight hours, but you should be consistent about what’s work time and what’s not. If you don’t make any rules, you’ll be much more likely to blow off work whenever you don’t feel like doing it.
Eat Something
Make sure meals are part of your routine. If you don’t know when you’re eating, you’ll be likely to knock off work at any time to get takeout or fix yourself a snack. I’m as guilty of this as the next guy, but I find that eating breakfast in the morning helps set the pace for the day. If you can start the day with a few hours of feeling full, you’ll reduce the temptation to quit early and have lunch. You should definitely eat when you’re hungry, but eating breakfast will keep you from being hungry when you’re trying to build up some momentum in the morning.
Because I work from home and struggle with a lot of this stuff myself, I’m sure I’ll write more on this subject in the future. I’d be interested to hear what good advice you have for being productive away from the office, so please leave me a note in the comments.
Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He writes about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can also find him on Twitter and at his blog.
Photo Credit — bs
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My suggestion – work on a schedule that suits you. if working business hours doesn’t suit then don’t do it.
Great post Jay!
Worked from home for 12 years, and totally disagree about keeping a regular schedule. Schedule flexibility is one of the biggest perqs of working at home. If you need the discipline that a regular schedule provides, then by all means feel free, but for those with some discipline it’s unnecessary structure. If anything, my problem at home was working too much, not slacking off. (Actually, all of your advice here seems to be anti-slacking, so maybe I’m just not the audience for this post.)
For self-disciplined people, I think that keeping a schedule is counter-productive.
Working whenever you want is a big advantage of working from home, you just need to actually get the work done.
Getting the work done in ONE day (working 24hours straight) or 4 days (working 6hours/day for 4days) depends just on what deadline are you on. So, you should let the deadlines and your motivation decide when/where/how much to work.
Close you email and IM apps (or hide them and turn of any kind of notification). Make it a routine to check your messages and reply to them all at once at certain times. Make it a part of your schedule. Keeping email and IM apps open all the time steals a lot of energy and focus.
great tips…I am recently thinking of starting to work from home…thanks
I have the problem with bed being next to my work desk. Even now I work from my bed.
i do the same thing – I often start work without even getting out of bed
Just work on a schedule that suits you and be consistent about what’s work time.
We call it h.o.m.e.
Home Office Mental Exhaustion – and we have a cure:
FunkBunk. http://www.funkbunk.com/2009/11/is-working-from-home-giving-you-home/
It’s always important to get some exercise during the day. It’s real easy to stay in front of the computer all day, whether I’m training, surfing or doing some type of research, I just have to get away for 15 or 30 minutes and take a break. Today, with online applications, video, cloud computing, etc. I can do sales training all day long and learn all the “stuff” but the real work from home is when I talk to prospects. Sometimes I just need to put it all aside, take 15 minutes to get my heart pounding a little faster and then hit the phones and sell something.