Working home alone tips: Tip #1
I've been working from home for the past 8 months so I thought I'd start recording what I've tried, what works for me and what doesn't work. These tips will certainly evolve, change and maybe even be scrapped over time.
Background
Just over a year ago my girlfriend, Jo (now my wife), and I decided to move back up to Scotland to be closer to family and hopefully improve our general quality of life. This wasn't too difficult a decision for me to make. Although we were reasonably happy in Hertford I was really fed up with the commute into London every day. I felt that it was two hours of my life that I was wasting and that I could easily be using that time better. My company had been really good to me and allowed me to work one day from home but it still wasn't working for me. It wasn't working because of the commute but also because I found a 9 to 17:30 job didn't really fit in with how I worked. To be absolutely honest I'm still trying to find out how exactly I work best but I certainly feel I've been much more productive over the past 8 months than I was in the last 6 months in my previous job. However, over the past couple of months my productivity has started to drop. And I'm putting this down to a few factors but one of them has definitely been that Jo has started working fulltime and I've been left to work home alone (Well, I do have Dexter too :-) ).
Tip #1: Plan your day
It's way too easy to be distracted and then spend hours doing something that isn't core to what you are supposed to be doing (In fact this blog post is a good example of this - I just woke up early and wanted to write something). So, my tip, based on purely the fact that it worked yesterday, is to plan each day. You can do this in the night before so that it puts you at ease about what you are doing tomorrow. Or you can do it first thing after you make your start for the day.
I've started doing this by opening up my Google Calendar in the morning and blocking out sections of the day for pieces of work and even marking sections for reading blog posts, emails and for lunch. I know I've just said that it's way too easy to be distracted but you can actually plan a bit of this into your day. Why? because there is some value to letting your mind wonder as it's a great way of forming ideas.
I'm a big believer that the big plan is no longer required but this doesn't mean you don't plan at all. Read the unplan blog for more information.
