One of the attractions of working at home is the vision of freedom it invokes — no time clock, no time sheets, and no one to account for how you spend your time. Yes, it is an attractive proposition, but like so many attractive propositions there is a heavy downside — you are likely wasting a lot of time.
In the office, I am used to creating an agenda for the day and it’s greatly improved my productivity and reduced my stress immeasurably. The art of planning your day is the number one thing you should master as you make your transition to working from home. Having a purpose each day will set you straight on the right path.
However, even with a plan, sometimes you can run into a spat of relatively unproductive days–even when the “To Do” list seems to grow exponentially.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Recognize where you may become derailed. It’s too easy to waste time doing nonpriority tasks. At times everything seems important, and it becomes difficult to dig yourself from the head of tasks before you.
- Concentrate your time and effort on the highest priority activities that help you to get more done.
- It’s too easy to get sidetracked or distracted from your current task at hand. Let’s face it. You are at home. The temptation to turn on the television or take a nap can be quite appealing. You may even want to jump to a low priority task because it feels easier. Don’t do it say the course.
- Unscheduled work time can often overlap into your free time until you don’t have any free time at all. Unscheduled work time may come from rework or colleague calling to discuss a work issue that is completely off topic to your current focus. Your boss may send you new work that needed to be done yesterday!
- Your free time can take over your work time and you may end up falling behind with important projects. You have to maintain a sense of work life balance but focus on getting the job done without delay.
