11 Rules For Working From Home Effectively

A practical guide for freelancers

In pre-Covid times, many of us dreamed of changing our office to our favorite room or beach. Life has made its own adjustments, and now work in the office has become more of an exception to the rule. And it turned out that working from home is not so easy.

Staying motivated and efficient while lying on the couch under a blanket with your favorite TV series and a cat under your arm is not an easy task. We tell you how to avoid boredom in familiar walls and not stop moving up the career ladder.

HOW TO WORK

Set up your workspace

The first and most important rule of successful work from home is a well-organized workspace. Not everyone has the opportunity, as in Hollywood films, to allocate a whole office for this purpose, but this is not at all necessary. It will be enough to have a table cleared of all unnecessary trifles, a comfortable chair and all sorts of useful accessories needed for the case, such as a notebook, pen, calendar, and maybe a book with useful tips on your specialty. A well-arranged area will help you focus faster and not be distracted by extraneous things. By the way, for the same purpose, it is worth considering your wardrobe: working in a cozy bathrobe is the dream of every person, but it’s easier to keep good spirits and work rhythm in more formal clothes.

Start working in the morning

Even if you are an uncompromising night owl, you should not postpone the start of the working day until noon: it is best to “swing” by the traditional 10:00 am and get down to business – in the end, the sooner you start, the sooner you finish the work. The habit of putting everything off until the last moment in the office makes it very difficult for people to perform their own duties, and in the case of working from home, this approach turns into endless laziness – and a real professional disaster.

Make a to-do list

When a person is in the office, the “fighting spirit” comes to him by itself – after all, there is nothing special to do other than business. In the case of working from home, it is much easier to miss some task, because you often simply have no one to remind you about it. Therefore, it is so important the night before or right in the morning to make a plan for the day – what needs to be done first, what is the second, and what is the third. This will help distribute the load and not miss anything.

Set yourself breaks for rest

A work break must also be included in the schedule of the day. This is necessary not only in order to take a breath (which is natural), but also in order to devote this time to viewing social networks. It is much better to flip through your own feed at a specific period than to be distracted by this activity throughout the working day: at the office, colleagues and bosses will not let you get too immersed in social networks, but at home there is a risk of getting lost in them and completely forgetting about business.

Don’t get distracted by household chores

It is very important to explain to your loved ones that working from home is the same work, and not some kind of vacation or sick leave. Therefore, you cannot do all the household chores, otherwise you risk missing something important in your immediate duties. Not everyone can immediately understand and accept this, so they will periodically distract themselves with their requests (“But you work from home!”), However, do not give in to this gentle pressure and convey the idea that your room is the same office.

Think about how to spend off-duty time

Oddly enough, a trip to the office for many people is also a kind of entertainment and access to people. Yes, and often on the way home there is an opportunity to look at the cinema or meet friends. A person working from home is deprived of all this, but in no case should you allow yourself to engage only in your professional duties. Even if at first you will be lazy, you need to make a plan for a week to organize your own leisure time: it can be playing sports, watching TV shows, chatting with friends. Without it, life will soon become like an endless Groundhog Day even more than in the case of office work.

HOW TO NOT STOP ON THE WAY ON THE CAREER LADDER?

Communicate with colleagues

In order not to completely lose your career prospects by switching to work from home, you should try to maintain the closest communication with colleagues, even remotely. Write work letters, make friends on social networks, and then you will be remembered before the rest of the remote employees and, possibly, they will offer a responsible task, and then a promotion or a promotion.

Be proactive

The rules of working from home are in many ways the same as in the office: if you want promotion and career growth, be proactive. Offer interesting projects, ideas, directions for development, and then you will surely be noticed and, on occasion, they will definitely give you the opportunity to show yourself in some important business. If you do not take the initiative, then there is a high risk that gradually your colleagues will simply stop taking you seriously and write you off.

Suggest a KPI system

In order for the authorities to definitely appreciate you, you can offer them to introduce a KPI system for your work. Firstly, it will be a real challenge (few people ask for the introduction of this system for themselves), and secondly, if you are a really excellent specialist, you can easily prove how good you are in your business, even when working remotely. And, of course, all this in the end can be a good reason for asking for an increase in salary and position.