As the internet makes it increasingly easy to work from anywhere, more and more companies are evolving to accommodate the flexibility of a work at home job. The shift from working in an office to working from home has awesome benefits and many people would love the opportunity to do just that. But it also has some of its downsides. The lack of an official office environment and the social isolation you’ll experience can make it hard to work from a home office. When making the transition, here are 4 tricks you can have up your sleeve to boost your productivity in your new work at home position.
1. Fake A Commute to Make the Mental Shift from Not Working to Working
Not having a commute is a huge burden you no longer have to bare when working from home. Dealing with traffic is one of the worst aspects of modern life and yet the commute itself serves a useful function we rarely consider. It acts as a intermediary between not working and working. Those minutes in the car are a transition time. When it no longer exists, you might find it hard to just wake up and start working from home. I’m not saying you should go drive around aimlessly to make up for it, but instead come up with something else that serves the same function as a transition between work and home. For instance, you might walk to the local coffee shop and get a cup of coffee every morning, take your kids to school, or hit up the gym in the morning before work and these can all replace the utilitarian function of the commute you no longer have.
2. Do Not Eat Lunch in the Same Room You Work From
One of the greatest parts of working from home is having your kitchen to prepare meals in. But one of the not so greatest parts about working from home is the ease in which you can find yourself working from your desk while eating your lunch. It’s important that you take breaks and get out of your office and this includes taking a lunch break. Try eating outside or even hopping in your car and eating out occasionally. This will help you stay motivated and focused when you return from lunch.
3. Have a Dedicated Work Laptop
It’s tempting to only have 1 laptop and use it for everything, work related or not. But the problem with this approach is that you quickly will mix up the parts of your life that part of your work and not part of your work. Do you really want to read emails from your boss when you just wanted to get on Facebook? When it’s all one laptop, you’ll find it’s very hard to not check on work related things outside of work.
4. Dress for Success
Many might be skeptical on this point, so I only ask you to keep an open mind and give it a shot, but the idea is to dress and groom yourself as you would if you were working from a professional office environment. There’s something “official” about wearing dress clothes, shaving, and styling our hair the right way that prepares us to work better – and that’s another trick you can use when working from home to be more productive, even if the only person who sees you looking professional is you!
By DeAngelo Sage, Editor at Wardrobe Closets. DeAngelo has worked virtually, at home, and on the road ever since 2007 and can’t imagine clocking back into a cubicle anytime soon.
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