There a million different ways to go about working from home. You have the freedom to accomplish all the work you need to in any way imaginable.
Nobody gave us an outline for how to work from home. It’s up to us to determine what kind of work environment we want to give ourselves.
A study by Standford of 16,000 workers over 9 months found that working from home increased productivity by 13%. Clearly, there’s more potential for productivity and better success with work from home.
Here are possible routines you could do when working from home:
- You could wake up last minute and begin work.
- You could wake up an hour early, shower, go for a walk, and have a coffee before work.
- You could work in sweatpants and a hoodie.
- You could dress up in “work clothes”.
- You could work from your bedroom.
- You could work from your office.
- You could cook food for lunch.
- You could go out for lunch.
- You could have distractions during work.
- You could suppress distractions during work.
With so many different ways to approach work from home, it can become overwhelming because there are so many different ways to go about it.
All it takes is about a week to a month of trial and error to find your groove.
It’s like the time when we attended grade school. You had your own preferences.
You could head to the library after school to get work done. You could do it from the comfort of the desk in your bedroom. Or you were forced to do it at the end of the day because of sports.
Explore all the different scenarios I listed above and see what works for you. I can’t tell you what you should do.
But I can tell you what works for me.
It’s waking up early, taking a shower, going for a little walk, eating cereal with sliced bananas, drinking a ton of water, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, wearing my comfy Ugg house shoes, eating food in the fridge, working beside my bed, and listening to flow-state music.
I didn’t come up with what works for me overnight. It took nearly two months before I made all these activities a habit. It wasn’t easy.
Final Thought
To successfully work from home, you have to constantly test what works for you and take full advantage of work from home while continuing to meet the standards.
The separation between home and work can be confusing. The more you discover ways to rewire your brain, the better and more productive you’ll be.