Tuesday, August 10, 2010

How to Be More Productive While Working From Home

When you work from home, it's normally considered to be a good situation. You don't have to start real early if you don't want to. You don't have to dress up. You don't have to commute wasting all that time and gas money. While these are nice, sometimes it's easy to be distracted at home. Find out what you need to be doing that will help you be more productive while you are working at home.

The first thing that you need to do is to limit your distractions from your family. It will be very easy for your spouse or children to want to be around you, talk to you, play with you, and interact with you since you are there. You need to try to set boundaries so that you can actually get some work done.

Have a starting point for the day and an ending point. While you are free to work whenever you want, it's still a good practice to have times where you will be working. This will help you stay focused and get more done.

Write down a list of tasks that need to be done. This is best done the night before. This way you can wake up and be ready to get started on this task list. You won't be sitting there wondering what you need to work on.

Avoid television as this can become a huge problem. Many working at home will start to watch television and get sucked into it. Before you know it an hour or two of your time is gone. Don't do this.

Try to be as comfortable as possible while you are working. Wear comfortable clothes and have a chair that will keep you alert. This will help you have less fatigue during the day.

Keep all your errands together. If you have a work related errand, try to tie in your home errands as well so these can be done in one big trip. This will save you some time giving you a bit more time that you could be working.

Limit your phone and talk time. Many will walk to talk to you since they think that you are available. Do your best to limit this as much as possible. Set the tone that you will be working else unproductive patterns will form.