Working from home is fantastic, right? That’s until your toddler interrupts every 5 seconds, your neighbor whose power tools never seem to stop, and a string of people keep showing up at your door with alarming regularity.
Working remotely has many benefits. Check out our favorite tips to help you get more done and keep your sanity intact.
Create a schedule and maintain it. Working remotely sometimes means extending your working hours or starting in the wee hours of the morning because your client is in another time zone. What this should mean is that you wrap up early as well, or at least have a late morning the next day.
Mornings are important. Your morning routine might start with a cup of coffee, getting dressed for the day, or sneaking in a quick workout. The important thing is creating one that ends with you starting work.
Create a separate time for children, chores, cooking, and other tasks that keep a house running and your work. And everyone down to you and the dog needs to respect that.
Give yourself breaks throughout the day, even if it’s an hour for lunch and two 15-minute breaks to grab a cup of coffee or stretch your legs. Leave your home and get out and move at least once a day. The fresh air and sunlight will do you right, plus you can complete a few chores, walk the dog, and come back to work refreshed.
Ideally, you should have a room or home office set up if you work full time from your house. Sadly, this is not always possible, so a desk and some peripherals just for work will have to suffice. You may even want to go so far as having a separate machine for personal and work use or partitioning your hard drive and creating a different user account for work, too.
When you work from home full time, get yourself a phone number that you only use for work, conference calls, etc.
While some organizations will give access to VPN, especially when dealing with sensitive information, having your VPN on while working is always a good idea. This is one of the critical things you can do to protect your data when using the coffee shop or co-working space WIFI.
