Working from home can be a great experience. Just think about it, you can earn a living without leaving your comfort zone! Yes, it’s amazing, but it is still not so easy. For example, if you want to be as productive as possible, your daily routine needs to be improved by yourself. Forget taking a nap in the afternoon or cooking that fancy Italian recipe that you found online. And scheduling your time is essential. If you don’t, you’re going to waste it! So let’s take a quick look at three simple and effective ways that you can do to be successful when you work from home.
#1 Separate Space
You must avoid distractions, such as your phone or your family talking to you. It’s essential that you successfully split those two aspects of your life, otherwise every time you are at home it’s going to feel like work. One way you can do this is by having a dedicated desk or office. If a common space, like a kitchen table, must be used, then 1) clear everything from the space when you are done working each day and 2) pay extra close attention to how you organize your work into storage. Some people may only need a single binder for that, others might benefit from a filing cabinet.
#2 Change your clothes
Do you think you’ll end up working all day long in your pajamas? There are many experiments indicating a bond between how you dress and how good you are in your work. For instance, Adam D. Galinsky, a Management professor at the Kellog School of Northwestern University in Illinois, uncovered the enclothed cognition. He found that people performed better when they thought they were wearing doctors’ coat, while the others were convinced that their coats were used by painters. We can utilize this principle by simply changing your clothes in the morning, so your body knows that it’s work from home, not bedtime!
#3 Start Sooner
Do you think you’ll get to sleep all morning because you work from home? If you want to earn a normal full-time job salary, you will need to work hard. You can’t afford to lose half the day sleeping. Plus, waking up early affect your mood, scientists have proved that you will be more productive and less tired. A lot of successful people, such as Tim Cook (Apple CEO), Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder and CEO) and Richard Branson (Virgin founder and CEO), wake up at 5:30 AM in the morning, it is also great because it will not take time from your social life. You will grow into a better version of yourself if you wake up earlier. When you start your day early, you are literally two steps ahead of other people!