How to stay productive while working from home

^{Image - Pixabay CC0}

In today’s world, work is not what it is used to be some 15 - 30 years ago, with the heavy penetration of internet, offices are no longer a place, it is mostly on our phones, laptops and other devices. And with the development of digital skills such as copywriting, photography, software development, trading of crypto and fiats assets. These and other vocations don’t really require a physical office, except in the cases of large organizations who make it compulsory that staff show up at work. But in many instances, entrepreneurs and freelancers alike, opt to work from home, as it is both cost effective and convenient to do so.

But working from the convenience of our homes may not be as convenient as it sounds as there are a lot of challenges associated with working from home. Some of these challenges stem from us due to our lack of discipline, and other challenges may arise from those around us, as they may have a little disregard of our time. At the end of the day, working from home can be very rewarding, or turn out to be a waste of one's time, especially if you are not great with time management.

In today’s post, we will look at a few things we can do to make our time working from the convenience of our homes to be fulfilling and very rewarding.

Have Clearly Defined Spaces

This is simply the most important part of working from home, have a clearly defined allocation of spaces, you need to have an office. Depending on the size of your house you can achieve this in several ways, if you have a sizeable house, you can dedicate one room as your office, and everything work related should go into that room. And you yourself have to respect that room as an office, and it is reserved for creating and productive work. But if you have a smaller house like myself, I stay in a one-bedroom apartment, like in my case, you can make your living room your office and your bedroom is and other areas can be said to be home. And when you are in the living you at certain hours, it should be work-related, and no matter what, you don’t go to the bedroom until the end of working hours.

Having clearly defined spaces helps in keeping our focus and spending the right amount of time we have productively. It is important you have this structure set out, so as to help set a baseline to know how you’re spending your time. And being an entrepreneur or a freelancer, there are not work hours, you close from work when the job has been done. And you resume work when you open your eyes, and when you close your eyes to sleep is when you are closed for the day.

You need to Have Rules

While you may have clearly defined areas where work happens, it may not be enough to get the job done, you need set rules in order to make your time working from home productive. And this is why having set rules very important, depending on your personality, you may want to have an opening and closing hours where work is done, or times where you can attend to other things like taking care of chores, errands or spending time with your loved one. This is very crucial because your availability may be abused by those around you. So, you may want to have set out time where you can have a chat during work hours, or during lunch breaks. You need this set rules to help you focus on what really matters - Work!

These rules are what really puts the whole work from home experience really profitable, as you will be in charge of your activities, get to decide what should be done and when it should be done because, at the end of the day, you are you are your own boss. But the most important thing here is time management, as that skill must be mastered.

References

^{Monster - Benefits of working from Home}

^{Forbes - Working from Home}