Our Best Tips for Working From Home
As a creative house doing the majority of our daily work digitally, we are lucky to have the luxury to skip the office and spend our work days in the comfort of our home offices. While the work-from-home life isn’t necessarily best for every personality, we’ve grown to love it. With a lot of our friends and clients getting a taste of the work-from-home life these days, we wanted to round up a few of our best tips when it comes to productivity, routines and making the most of working from home.
Give Yourself Some Morning Time
When working from home, you get the beautiful gift of no stress to wake up in time to get ready, fight traffic and get to the office (can I get a hallelujah). But this luxury often makes it tempting to wake up at the last minute and immediately glue your eyes to your computer for the day. Take it from us—days begin so much better when you give yourself the time to wake up slowly, enjoy a nice cup of coffee or tea, eat breakfast, journal or read, maybe take a morning walk or squeeze in a workout, or whatever you might do to enjoy a peaceful morning. THEN make your way to your computer feeling refreshed, awake and ready to tackle the day. We spend the entirety of our days with our eyes glued to a screen, no need to rush it.
Set Up a Designated Work Space
While it’s a liberating thing to be able to move around and change scenery as you work with everything being done right from your laptop, it’s important to have a space meant only for work to both start the day getting organized and get back to when you need to dig in and focus. Trust us, as soon as you start working from the couch, the bedroom, or the kitchen counter, the boundaries between work and non-work get blurry and you begin to lose that essential thing we all need—work-life balance (more on this later).
Create a Vibe
A personal favorite of our founder, your designated workspace should be your sanctuary. Make It yours as much as possible, and create a serious VIBE for yourself. You have no coworkers to limit your creativity, after all. Here are a few tips we’ve found useful:
Light a candle. One of our personal favorites is by our client, Chateau Sonoma. Just subtle enough not to overwhelm, but intoxicating enough to change your outlook for the afternoon.
Jam out. If you can work with music in the background, get after it, friends. Again, you have no coworkers to dictate your choices. Not sure where to begin? We have a library of choices and a special Quarantunes playlist for these trying times. Jam with us.
Do you love fresh flowers? Forage a few blooms or some fresh greenery on your next foray out of the house and bundle them up in a small bouquet on your desk. Breathe it in.
Seek inspiration. If something in particular speaks to you—a painting, a poem, a quote—pin it up on your workspace. Avoid clutter (depending on your enneagram type this can be the slow death of your designated workspace, so consider yourself warned), but use these visual pieces to create inspiration for yourself. Your home office is the modern day cubicle without anyone there to monitor choices—get wild with it.
Get Dressed!
Let’s be real: this is a constant struggle of ours, but getting dressed for the day is key for overall success when working from home. Do you have to get dressed up or wear anything uncomfortable in order to succeed at this step? No way. Simply the act of getting out of your pajamas and putting on day clothes is huge for your motivation and even more so, your self esteem. While there will be days you confidently decide staying in your pajamas is a great idea (and we fully support that decision) it’s likely that you will notice it to have an effect on your day to day productivity and self image if pajama wearing becomes a constant thing. When we start to feel ourselves getting lazy or feeling crummy after wearing pajamas too long, we always make a point to get dressed and get ready for the day even if we have nowhere to go. Look good, feel good, play good.
Try the Pomodoro Technique
Feel free to google this one but this technique was created to help with productivity and it goes a little something like this...
Decide on a task to be done
Set a timer for 25 minutes
Work until the timer goes off
Take a 5 minute break
Repeat steps 1-4 four times
Take a 25-30 minute break
We love that this technique is simple enough and helps you to stay focused, be productive and have something to work towards (that nice 30 min break!)
Try “Constructive Daydreaming”
A phrase that Meghan has borrowed from Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, this is our version, applied to working from home life. Sit down before checking your email (this is key), and imagine how your ideal day will go. Include items that you want to check off your to-do list and projects that you need to make time for (emails be damned). Include anything that will nourish you throughout the day—taking a walk, finding a good playlist, reading for 10 minutes in between projects, or a really good meal. Consider how unexpected things (namely your inbox and phone calls) will factor into this daydream and then set it into motion.
Don’t Forget Fresh Air
Staring at a computer screen inside all day long may sound easy, but it can be seriously exhausting—for your eyes, your brain and even your body as you sit in the same position all day. When it’s break time, make it a priority to move your body, breathe in some fresh air and soak up the sunshine. Go for a walk, leave your phone behind and be intentional to unplug, even if only for a few minutes. You’ll come back to your work feeling so much better and more refreshed than when you left it, guaranteed.
Do Your Best To Find Balance
In our busy world it’s already seemingly difficult for people to create a healthy work-life balance, and believe it or not, working from home makes that balance even harder. It’s no small feat to separate home life and work life when it all happens in the same place—this is where the importance of a routine comes in. While each day of working from home may look different schedule-wise, it’s important to create a routine for yourself for things like waking up, starting work, lunch time, ending work, etc. Without an office to clock in and out or a boss breathing down your neck, sticking to your chosen routine is entirely your own responsibility. The stricter you are with your time, the better you will get at teaching your brain (and body) to artfully switch between work mode and home mode, ideally giving you that work-life balance you need to be successful at your job while still giving yourself the gift of a home life.
Whether your working from home is new or just temporary, we hope these tips help you make the most of your new normal. Who knows, you may end up loving it and want to join the rapidly growing contingency of us who do it on the daily.
Have further thoughts to add or tips of your own to share? Going crazy? Need a friend? Tell us about in the comments below.