17 Tips on How to work from home?

I’m often asked how you do it, working from home?  For me it is easy, I love having my own business. I love the freedom and the life balance that working from home brings. If you decide to give it a go or you have been forced to work from home due to COVID-19 my 17 easy-to-follow Tips will help streamline your working from home transition.

Start or Re-Start your Work from Home Decision

I totally understand that for many women it will be a hard decision to start a business or hard to convince a boss to allow you to work from home and make it a reality. I had an inner determination and a desire to be my own boss. This was and continues to be my motivation.  I love making all the decisions, making changes and being the boss of my own time and being in control of my destiny.  I love being able to prioritize my family’s needs, being able to be there for them when they need me is essential for me. Working from home fits perfectly with what is important for me. if you need some help uncovering what is important to you have a look at Brainstorming Ideas and Goals  or  What is your Dream? Once you have the “What and Why” sorted now we can move to the “How”.

17 Practical, Tested, Easy Tips for Working from Home

Here are the real-life actions and solutions that I do in order to reach the business and personal goals that are important to me. This is how I do it and how can you do it too.

1. Enjoy what you do, have a passion for your business, so working isn’t a chore but rather a pleasure.
2. Set a work schedule that works for you and allocate an appropriate amount of time to running your business. Work out if you are going to work full or part time and how much time you are prepared to invest in your business.  Establish your work hours, create a realistic but effective daily routine that you can stick to and plan everything around your schedule, keep it consistent, then stick to it and don’t just keep working because you can, put a limit on work hours each day to avoid work creep.
3. Find ways to make other areas of your personal life easier to manage, such as getting in a cleaner, finding a company that makes pre-made meals, employing a VA (vitual assistant) and a baby sitter, using time saving appliances etc. This will keep the pressure off you thinking you have to be everything to everyone.  It will give you more flexibility so you can do what you want to do.
4. Have a quiet dedicated work area, if you are lucky to have a spare bedroom that is wonderful, or you can turn a garage into a work room or office. Being able to enter a room and know you are in work mode makes it much easier to focus on what you have to do, like wise when you leave the office and shut the door behind means you have put work to bed and you can concentrate on life not work.
5. Turn your new home office into an amazing office that feels nice to be in so you want to be there and make sure it is fully functioning with everything you need. Buy the most comfortable ergonomic office chair for you to sit in and a good pair of headphones.
6. Invest in the best technology. Make sure you have good wi-fi, a reliable dedicate computer, a diary or calendar and use a good project management software program or CRM that connects to the cloud and cloud storage, so you can work remotely making your life and job easier.
7. Move your body, stretch regularly, walk and talk on the phone, purchase a stand up sit down desk. Schedule your breaks throughout the day and make sure you get up and move during these times, go outside and get some vitamin D each day.
8. Surround yourself with a team that keeps you focused, schedule daily or weekly team zoom or phone calls and create accountability partners to help you reach targets.
9. Write your to-do lists every morning or at the end of the day, use post-it-notes to brainstorm regularly or mind maps and write steps or goals on white boards to keep you focused on what you need to do.
10. Or less it is part of your job, stay away from social media, the television or any time wasting activity, they can suck up all your time.
11. Pretend you are going to the office and get dressed every morning and start the day off fresh. This will influence your mindset and by “Dressing for success”, you will be mentally prepared for the day.
12. Make sure you have a lunch break and eat a healthy meal, make a big pot of soup at the beginning of the week or cook extra each night for the following days lunch.
13. Drink plenty of water, put a fresh jug on the desk each morning, add some lemon slices for flavour.
14. Listen to music to keep your mood high, it is great for background noise too just make sure you can easily mute it when calls come in.
15. Take the office out of the house and into the public occasionally so you get to communicate with others on a face to face basis, try working from a coffee shop or library with free wi-fi some days, this will change things around for you and keep your productivity up.
16. Be flexible, change what doesn’t work and try new things. Don’t be too hard on yourself, just work out what works for you and if it works then stick to it and change other things so you enjoy what you are doing.
17. Limit family or friend contact when you are working. This can be hard if you have young children at home, but unfortunately you need to have boundaries when you are working so you can focus on your work and when you are not working then you can be free to give them the full attention they need.

Working from home allows women much greater freedom and increased benefits to achieve better work-life balance.  Managed well, you will love your new life and be much more fulfilled.