Not all business owners have the luxury of working from a home office, but if you do you know that it is sometimes easy to get distracted from work and get involved in home-task activities. When you’re interacting with clients via email and telephone it’s sometimes easy to forget to “dress for success.” It’s been proven though that even if you work virtually and if you work from a home office you should still get dressed as though you were heading to an office outside of your home. If you work from home, you may find that initially your productivity suffers a bit and at the end of the workday you’re wondering, “Why is my do-do list still so long?!”
Here are some tips to make your work-from-home environment a productive place:
- Have a set routine and get up and get (professionally) dressed every workday.
- Before you end your work day, create the to do list for the next day.
- If you have several tasks that need to be started but not necessarily completed, set a timer and schedule 30 to 60 minute blocks of time and break down the tasks into smaller chunks. Multi-tasking isn’t the best way to go but if you schedule set amounts of time to complete (or at least work on) a project you will see the tasks whittling away.
- Shedule meetings or phone calls first thing in the morning or last thing in the afternoon—that way you won’t be distracted in the middle of the day.
- At the end of the day take a few moments to reconcile your to do list because crossing them off is a perfect productivity boost.
- Even though you working from home and should be diligent in completing your tasks, make certain you take a lunch break, schedule another break and get up and stretch, walk the dog, do some stretches, get up and get moving!
If you find that working from home isn’t what you want to be doing, there is office space you can rent through Tradesource!
What tricks do you have to remain productive, especially if you hold a virtual position?