How to be Productive Working From Home

Working from home can be very challenging. You know that no one is going to be looking over your shoulder or checking if you are getting the job done. You have to motivate and organize yourself. It is very easy to get distracted if you are at home since there are a hundred things that clamor for your attention. The trick is to learn to distance yourself from those pressures and concentrate on your work.

Get your work schedule organized so that you can actually work at home as professionally as anyone else.

• For anyone working from home, a workday must start just the same way as it would were they attending an outside office – with a refreshing shower followed by getting dressed. This will set the tone for you to work like a “professional” during the day.

• Create a schedule for the day and stick to it. Decide how many hours you want to work during a day and abide by it. Treat your days like a “regular” work day. Plan to work from nine to four or ten to five with an hour’s lunch break.

• Keep your office separate from the rest of the house. Working from home demands that you create a space for yourself by demarcating your “work” area away from your living area. This includes your phone and computer. You will then feel that you are working in your office rather than on a dining table strewn with leftovers from breakfast! At the end of the day, you can also close the door leaving the office behind you.

• Be serious about your work. Do not answer personal calls during your work hours. The best thing to do is to keep your work phone separate from your home phone and refrain from scheduling personal activities during your business hours.

• Network with like-minded people. You will not be meeting your co workers or clients everyday, so it will do you good to find people who are doing the same things as you are. Join an online forum or chat group where you can talk about the joys and pitfalls of working from home – there, that’s your grapevine!

• Plan to go out and meet people at least a couple of times a week. If you don’t have business meetings lined up, do the next best thing, and visit a public place where you can carry on working. Bang away on your laptop, make edits to your printouts or problem-solve in your notebook in a coffee shop or restaurant. Being among other people will rejuvenate you and keep the sense of isolation at bay.

• Create deadlines for accomplishing your work. They could be fictitious and made purely to keep you going. But do it anyway. It will give you a sense of achievement when you are able to meet the deadline.

• If you are a mother who is taking care of the kids in addition to working from home, offer to exchange babysitting services with another mom to give each other some much-needed time.

• If you're a professional, find out if there’s an appropriate organization which you could join. Not only does it give you a chance to interact with people with similar interests, but also helps you stay up-to-date in your chosen field of work.

Working from home is not as easy as it sounds, and those who do so have to make that extra effort to stay motivated. Done right, you can have the best of both worlds!