These days, more and more of us are working from home. And it’s such a miraculous thing to be able to do. You can choose your working hours, choose your work, and take your career prospects into your own hands. It’s incredibly exciting. However, when you don’t work from home, it can all seem glamorous. And you can envy anybody that works from home. But one thing that you don’t always see, is that it can be hard work. You may struggle to stay motivated, you may get cabin fever, and it’s difficult being on your own all day long! However, this doesn’t have to be something that holds you back. As long as you’re aware of this and the consequences that come with it, you can look to remedy it!
Now, when you do work from home, you are going to feel as if you’re losing your mind a little. We all do. However, when you know what to expect and you put the best possible plans in place, you can help yourself to overcome this, make those insane spells feel smaller, and actually enjoy the benefits of being freelance or self-employed. And the best part is, you can do this by just bringing in the smallest of tweaks. It doesn’t have to feel like a long, hard slog, but you will want to get used to a new rhythm and actually finding a successful way to work from home. And here are ten ideas to help you.
- Have A Routine
One of the main selling features of freelance life is just how freeing it is. However, you are going to find that it’s just too limiting. If you work when you feel like it, you’ll never work. Without structure, it’s chaos. So, you need to create a routine and know when you work best, in order to get some productive work done and avoid stress.
- Have An Office Space
Again, it can seem romantic to be able to write on the sofa or from bed – but this does not help your productivity. When you set up a home office, you’ve got a space to keep you productive, focused, and motivated. You can feel more in a working mood when you’re set up properly too. So keep this in mind.
- Take Breaks
Next up, you need to realize that you just cannot work on and on and on. Well, you can, but it won’t end well. You’ll either get sick or your work will suffer. Likely, both. And so, you need to make sure that you take breaks. Some will say that you should do it every hour, others a little less often. But you can do this in your own way, as long as you’re happy with the breaks you’re taking and they help you to stay sane.
- Minimize Distractions
It’s also incredibly easy to get distracted when you work from home. By people, tasks, thoughts, activities you like! But you need to make sure that you are minimizing them if you want to get your work done and stop stressing out that you’re struggling!
- Get Out
A huge downside of working from home is cabin fever. You can feel cooped up and get sick of it quickly! So make sure that you get out more. Go for a walk, do the grocery shop, see friends – and yes, this does all count as taking a break too.
- Work Out
Next, you’re not only going to want to get out of the house more often, but it may also help you if you can work out of the house a bit more too. We all get cabin fever if we’re in too much. So, packing up and heading to a local café or the library, or even going to a coworking space can really help. You get a change of scenery and sometimes a bit of social interaction too, which helps.
- Workout
Alongside working out of the house, you will find that working out and exercising can really help you to stay sane too. Only ever working, staying sedentary, and not being active is never good for you. Not for your health or your motivation levels. When you exercise, you have more energy, creativity, and you can be more productive too. Whether you use a personal trainer app with thousands of workouts, go to classes, or go for a run, it’s going to help you. Work a workout into your routine and you’ll notice the difference.
- Keep Spaces Separate
When you work from home, it’s really easy for you to blend your work and home life a bit too much – and this is not good for your mind. And so, you need to physically separate your work. Having an office helps, but if you don’t have one, having a set workspace that you avoid when you’re not working can keep you sane.
- Leave Work Behind
From here, you absolutely need to make sure that you’re then switching off mentally. It can be hard, because you’ll often feel like you’ve always got things on your mind, or that you want to work on things. But, if you’re going to successfully work from home and enjoy your lifestyle, you need to make sure that you can switch off and relax. This means that you need to shut the door on work when you’re done. No buts!
- Manage Your Time
Finally, you’re then going to want to make sure that you’re able to manage your time as well as you can. When you’re freelance or you have your own company, it’s easy to want to work all of the time. But you just can’t if you want to stay sane. You need boundaries and breaks and you need to stop at some point. If you can make sure that you manage your time well, you’ll find this so much easier. So the onus is on you to take control of this, boost your productivity, and manage your time well.
