Do you work from home? Before having your own business, before kids, before any type of real commitment and especially before you started your business, how easy did working from home sound. You could stay in your pajamas, not do your makeup, have the tv playing and sit on the couch with your laptop. Living the dream right.
Well, how wrong were we.
It’s a very different story when you actually start your own business and choose a home office for work! It’s hard work and in some aspects even harder than having a physical office location away from home so we have 5 tips to master the home/office combo.
Assign a work area. Whether it’s a spare bedroom or the study, this needs to become your place of work. It is really important when you combine home and work in the same place that you create a balance for yourself between work time and personal time and can “shut the door” when your finished for the day or night.
Define your “opening hours”. Even a home office needs opening and closing times and everyone that lives in the household need to be aware of them. When you’re working you need to focus and not worry about the washing, what to cook for dinner or what show is on TV. When you define your work hours while at home you can better balance all the million other things you need to also fit in to the day/week.
Get dressed for the day. Don’t fall into the habit of staying in pajamas or in your “round the house” clothes all day everyday. You need to treat your home office just as you would if you had an actual office location. You never know when you might need to do a video meeting or skype call plus it’s more productive to be dressed ready to work than dressed ready for a lazy afternoon on the couch.
Get some air and take a break. We tend to stay put and power through when we work from home, as we are worried about getting distracted if we look away from our workstation. It’s really important that throughout the day you take breaks for lunch, for coffee/tea and for some fresh air!
Ignore all of the above every so often. Pick a day and just enjoy the freedom and luxury we all believed working from home was once upon a time and put on your trackies, grab your laptop and take a nice comfy seat on your couch.
No matter how hard it can sometimes be to work from home, when you think about not being stuck in traffic and having the flexibility to choose what days and times you work it makes it all worth it.
So, after a long day of working from home in the office, we can truthfully say that we enjoy sitting on the couch with our laptops (and the heater on of course) and sharing some advice, tips and inspiration with you.
