First times are never easy and even less so if we have just embarked on a new project. We recently told you where to start if you are going to work from home and stressed the importance of planning.
But at the heart of every basis and source of wisdom is the same: routine. In Aticco we want to help you to find that organization in your routines because working from home is not a comfortable task if we do not learn to distribute better the different tasks.
Environment.
Let's start with something simple. If you are going to work from home you will have a space adapted for it; a table, a desk, another room... But you are at home and there is something you can't get rid of: your cell phone.
Your first routine is going to be the following, every day when you sit down or go into that room, you are going to leave your cell phone out. Surely you have one for work or a landline where clients can contact you; your private cell phone where your friends write WhatsApps to you all the time is not something you should have with you.
On the other hand, it is proven that a positive environment becomes a productive environment. We love working with piped music and one of the advantages of working from home in terms of atmosphere is that you are the DJ.
The schedule.
As a general rule, we are all used to working 8 hours straight in an office. Now that you have the option of working from home, that may be exactly what you don't want to do. So we are going to propose you something infallible to decide what hours you are going to do it. For example, you might want to get off on Friday afternoons because you are meeting your friends, or on Wednesdays you might want to come in later because you are taking your children to school.
Our idea is this: test. Just as it sounds. The only way to know if we like something, if something really suits our needs is to test if it works. You may think you'll perform better if you get up at 7 a.m. but it turns out that getting up early is not your thing. It's all about you assessing your own needs for working from home, and based on that, adapting yourself.
The point is to set parameters that you are willing to follow when deciding what your best schedule is. After all, you don't need 8 hours a day to perform like 8 hours, do you?
Breaks.
Working from home for so many hours at a time without stopping can be a personal drain that can only be solved by reducing your productivity. This is like driving, remember to make a technical stop along the way.
Now then, we are at home. Our advice is that your breaks also follow a schedule, simply because of one fact: distraction. When we are at home, we manage to be distracted by everything, even the household chores we were slowly putting off.
As you can see, working from home has more complicated aspects than it may seem at first. But it also has very positive things like stress reduction. We don't have to get up at a time we are unhappy with, we don't have to take a subway or bus running, we don't have two-hour traffic jams to get downtown, and we don't have to get up just two hours earlier to get to the office on time. Working from home can't offer you more time flexibility; let's learn to use these advantages to our advantage.
Pure routine.
A good routine can increase our productivity when working from home to an unknown extent. You, as an adult and working person, have full knowledge of what tasks you have to accomplish; that's why you will be your own best organizer. But let's see what kind of days exist in our schedule.
- The boom day
Depending on your industry and how you are working, a Monday may be the day you spend the most time sending and receiving emails. Therefore, never set that Monday as the end of a project, because that is exactly when you will need the most time; working from home does not save you the trouble of an email with the client of the day.
- The day of doom.
Fridays are our downfall. Assume above all that Fridays are the day we want to be the freest in our lives, that we are thinking about going out for a drink with our friends rather than working from home... let's face it! Motivation is key in our routine in search of productivity. Setting a Friday off is neither a sin nor a bad thing.
You may not have a Monday or Friday like this one, but I'm sure that when you read it, your subconscious has identified which day of the week is more like it. Simply apply it.
- The following day.
Every day, whether it is Monday or Wednesday, you should sit at your desk to work from home knowing what tasks you have to do. Throughout that same day different tasks may arise that you will add to that list of tasks, but remember, everything must have labels: important, urgent, in process, finished...
Working from home is full of advantages, don't get stuck with the idea of obligations. The incentives of routines are very positive if we learn to develop them and make the most of our productivity. Let's go for it!