Top 4 Tips for Work-From-Home Newbies

You’ve had your workday routine for years...possibly decades. There’s a drive into work, a building, a desk, coworkers, meetings, conversations, a drive home...and all of that has disappeared overnight. Well, except for the meetings.

Now, here you are attempting to do your job from home. At first, it felt great to just hang out in your pajamas all day while you joined conference calls and checked your email. But, you’re a few weeks in now and really looking for that focus and stability you had with your old routine.

So, here’s my top 4 tips for you, work-from-home-newbie, to help you find your routine and rhythm again. Not only will you feel more focused and organized, you’ll accomplish more and feel more like your old self.

1.) Keep Your Morning Routine

Just because you’re not heading out into public doesn’t mean you should let go of your entire schedule. We are creatures of habit, and maintaining our daily routine allows us to feel more settled and in control of our lives.

Do you normally workout in the morning? Great. Go for a run, do yoga, follow a YouTube workout. It may not be exactly the same as the gym, but it’ll still get you moving and ready for your day.

Shower and dress. It’s not just a hygiene thing. Dressing for the day also has a mental component. It helps you shift your mental state from home to work. It allows you to feel more focused and ready for the work day ahead. This doesn’t mean you have to put on a suit to work from your couch. Feel free to establish your own relaxed style. Maybe you wear your usual work top and leggings on the bottom. Maybe you opt for jeans and a t-shirt. Just change out of those pajamas you’ve been wearing for three days, okay?

2.) Establish Your Workspace

Choose one place in your home as your designated work space. Just as you use dressing for the day as a trigger to shift from your home to work mindset, creating a space specifically for working will allow you to seperate the two. It’ll help cut down on distractions that may cause underperformance. Also, it’ll allow you to make a clean break from work at the end of the day as you step away from that work space.

3.) Schedule Breaks

Now that you’re at home, you may not have your office mate popping in to chat or that loud-talker at the end of the hall forcing you to break your concentration. As nice as it may be to not have those distractions, it’s a good idea to make sure you still take breaks during your day. It may seem counter productive, but taking breaks actually allows you to focus and accomplish more. Your body and mind need a quick recharge every 30-60 minutes. It can just be 5 minutes to stretch, get some water, and go to the bathroom.

If you’re one of those zoned-in people for whom hours pass and you don’t even notice, you’ll want to block the time in your calendar or set a timer on your phone. Don’t forget to eat. Don’t forget to move. Your brain is a muscle, too. When you flex it for long periods of time, it gets tired. You lose focus. You lose effectiveness. Just 5 minutes away from your computer can make a world of difference.

As a productivity coach, I encourage the Pomodoro Technique, which is a productivity strategy that encourages short work sessions with frequent breaks. See The Pomodoro Technique: What It Is & How To Use It to learn more.

4.) Minimize Distractions

It can be awfully tempting to have the TV running in the background or to check your phone for the latest notifications, but if you’re looking to work effectively from home, these are some distractions you want to remove right away from your workspace. If you don’t use it for work, put your personal cell phone in the other room. Turn off any notifications for your devices. If you aren’t able to find a quiet place in your home to work, try putting on some headphones or earplugs to block out any noise distractions.

Just because you’re at home, it doesn’t mean that you should expect yourself to do the laundry, dishes, or any other household chores during work hours. As you create that work/home separation by getting dressed and choosing a designated work space, remember that this is your work time. You wouldn’t be doing these things at this time if you were in the office, so don’t feel pressured to take on home tasks during work hours. If you end up with extra time in your work schedule to do a load of laundry, awesome. But, this is the exception and not the rule.

If you are balancing working from home with caring for/homeschooling small children, please see Time Blocking for the Whole Family. You may not be in a position to seclude yourself from distractions and put in a full day of concentrated work time. That’s okay. I have some tips to help you establish a routine that works for your household.

BONUS TIP: Don’t forget to mute yourself

If you’re not used to video or teleconferencing and you now find yourself in this new world of virtual meetings, here’s the number one tip for you: put yourself on mute when you aren’t speaking. With everyone working from home, there will be background noise. Dogs bark; babies cry. It’s just the way things go. In order for you and your coworkers to have the best meeting experience possible, everyone needs to keep themselves muted until it’s their turn to speak. I promise, it will alleviate all kinds of stress and frustration from your day.

Just remember that things are harder when they’re new. The more you are able to practice these tips and establish your new work-from-home routines, the easier it will get. You’ve got this.