Working At Home: Making Your Home Office Productive

Summer is nearing its end and we all must refocus our attention towards work. Children returning to school must now open up their exercise books and their parents really should send that email. With telecommunications now at the centre of many businesses, we now often have the choice to work from home. In the first three months of 2014 it was estimated nearly 14% of the workforce were working from home. Even if we don’t decide to, we may bring work home out of hours or run a blog or webpage. The need for a work space that allows us to work from home is vital.

1. Make it an office This is your home so you probably won’t opt for the full time secretary and vending machine but you must create an environment separate from the rest of the house. You don’t have to spend the earth but invest in a nice chair so you’re comfortable and a whiteboard so you keep track of ideas and schedules. A pot plant would be nice too.

2. Organise

The most basic and perhaps most vital of steps is to keep things organised. Again, the beauty of a home office is that it is your space and you should decide how to organise things, you may not need a seven foot filing cabinet but try to keep your work tidy and easily accessible. Scrabbling for a report through piles of children’s drawings and newspapers doesn’t scream professionalism.

3. Set Rules

Set working hours for yourself and try not to break them. A survey from 2013 showed that around one in seven Londoners spent between one and two hours on non-work related sites each day. When you are working. Make sure everyone at home knows. If this is nine to five, then stick to it, if you only have an hour after you get home from your office job then put a note up on the door to remind everyone. If your child needs to do their homework in the office then make sure they adhere to the rules too, there’s nothing worse than a chatty colleague/child when you really need to get some work done.

4. Prioritise

Without a manager or superior immediately available you have to prioritise your time, which tasks are most urgent and which can wait. Make a ‘to do’ list each morning and check up on each aim throughout the day. If you complete a task give yourself a reward.

5. Enjoy the Freedom

Having made all of these points it might be worth disregarding all of them at some point. You probably wouldn’t have decided to work at home if you didn’t want to mold your own environment so enjoy being flexible. You can probably afford to take that ten minutes extra for your lunch every once in a while.

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27694938

2. http://www.canadalife.co.uk/media/32428/motivationproductivitypr.pdf