Thinking about how you can work from home with complete ease, just the same way you would work from your office space?
Of course, it’ very possible to create a beautiful office experience, right from the comfort of your home.
And a lot of established and new businesses are doing just fine, operating either partially or fully from their home office.
Prior to the outbreak of Coronavirus, working from home was a complete turn off for most businesses in some countries but, the pandemic brought a lot of changes.
And since then, a lot of businesses have been embracing the idea of working from home or operating a home office.
Does it make sense to Work from Home?
You might be wondering if it really makes sense to work from home. Well, the short answer is YES, it does.
And here’s the longer answer that…
Besides the fact that the peculiarity of your business is one of the major factors that will determine your preferred business office locations, if working from home was not really beneficial, and cost effective, most businesses will not work from home.
Benefits of Working From Home
You might be wondering if there are any benefits that comes with working from home…
To answer your question, Ill be listing out below, some of the reasons why businesses consider working from home;
- It is cost effective,
- Improves flexibility,
- Cuts out commute time thus increasing productive hours,
- Improves work-life balance,
- Removes location dependence
- Saves money on office rent etc.
There are many other benefits of working from home which I cannot list out here so, you’re not going to be the first or only person trying to create a home office but…
Like I mentioned earlier, before you finally decide on whether you want to create an office from your home or not, you’ll also want to consider some things including the nature of your business, Geographic Location, Target Clients etc.
Doing this will help you in making decisions that will push your business in the right direction.
That said, the following are some work from home tips that have worked for me and most other businesses like yours…
Tips to work from home like a Pro
Usually, working from home tips would slightly be different from one geographical location to another, depending on the experiences of people in that location…
In this five point tips, I’ve listed out strategies that are generally applicable to remote work, irrespective of your location.
The following are the tips…
Set up a Work Corner
Table of Contents
Working from home does not mean that you need to have an exclusive home office for your work before you can get productive.
However, you definitely need a conducive or safe space where you can do your work effectively without much disturbance. Especially when you don’t live alone.
For this to work very well, you need a corner that is quiet, free from distractions and a place where you can create an ambience of an office space, exclusively for your work.
Also, you’ll need a virtual office where you work.
This can be a website of your own or any other digital space that makes working from home easier for you.
Get your Tools Together
To work from home successfully, you need certain tools to get your work done.
From your gadgets to apps, internet service, stable power supply etc. you need to put these tools in place in order to get your work coming up effectively.
If you’re in a geographical region with stable electricity for instance, you may not have a lot to worry about with stable power supply but where you’re living in a region with non constant electricity, power outages could be one of the biggest fall outs that will affect your productivity.
To get around this, you want to work on putting in place, at least the most affordable alternative power sources to power up your gadgets.
Where you can’t get one, you have to utilize whatever electricity you have very effectively by focusing on performing most of the work that’s less dependent on electricity when there’s power outage..
When power is restored, you can then get over to work on most of the electricity reliant work at that time.
Of course this approach may not fix your issues entirely but, with much flexibility and pragmatism you can rely on this until you afford an alternative energy source.
Get a Daily Plan
One habit you’d mostly experience when you work from home without a plan or target is the habit of doing random things at different intervals.
Or let’s call it the habit of stopping in the middle of one work to fix another you think is more urgent.
This usually happens when there’s no plan for the day. Or when you don’t strictly follow your laid down plans.
While you may think that this is really helping you, you may not realize how inefficient it is, working at this rate.
To get this out of the way, you need to organize your daily schedules and then follow a strictly laid down plans that spells out roughly the things you need do for a particular day.
And how this thing will help you towards reaching your goal for the week or month.
This means you must have weekly goals that are measurable too. This takes us to step number four.
Set clear Goals
This is very important. Irrespective of whether you’re working from your lounge or an office space, you need set up measurable goals for your business.
Your goals could be anything from converting an ABC number of clients for your biz to getting your business from point A to B within an XYZ time.
Without a clear goal, you’re not getting anywhere with your biz. And if you’re not getting anywhere then there’s no need (or motivation) to work.
Set goals that inspire you. Make your goals realistic and allow it to power your drive to work as you wake up everyday.
Without this in place, you’ll hardly get better results when you work from home. Especially if you’re working for yourself.
Working for others is a bit different because you’re most likely under supervision and you’ll be reporting to a superior, so you may be forced to improve your productivity to avoid a query.
But when you work for yourself, you’re not reporting to anyone. And from time to time, you may feel it’s not bad to nibble away some hours.
It’s fine you’ll definitely not be penalized. But your bank account will suffer for the incessant nibbling.
So, whether you’re a self employed person, freelancer or entrepreneur, there’s need for accountability, if you really want to work from home successfully.
Stay Committed to Work
As an employee, one of the high points of working from home is that you may not have a lot of supervision compared to what you would have in a formal office environment.
With this, you could be tempted to put in less effort to work and this can affect your productivity in the long run.
For an entrepreneur on the other hand, being self employed affords you the opportunity to get up to work whenever you want and leave your desk at your convenience and no one would question you.
Managing such freedom without discipline and a serious commitment to your overall business goals can affect your business to a large extent.
So either as an employee or entrepreneur, you need lots of self discipline to set your goals and stay on track even if you could walk away without consequences.
This commitment is what will keep you on your desk even when you feel like taking a break.
Measure and track your Goals
Don’t be tempted to believe that because you’re working from home, it’s enough to set goals and forget about them.
Take out time to measure and track your goals, how realistic they are and how effective you’ve been working towards achieving them.
This will inform you on whether you’re actually getting the results right or not.
It will also guide you on what needs to be done.
If the biggest need for your biz right now is to survive the new normal, set your goals around that.
Chunk down these goals into small tasks that will get you closer to achieving it every day.
Review your Strategy
Don’t be scared to evaluate, review and re-strategize your approach to work, your strategy and other activities.
Check out those short emails you sent. Did they generate results? How many people opened it.
Find out, based on today’s result, do you want to create that same content again tomorrow?
It’s very easy to think that every thing is working right well after all you’re very busy…
Truth is, in this game, busyness is different from productivity so put your ears to the ground.
Your effort and hours are gold. Don’t waste it. Cut off activities that’s not adding up to your overall goals.
Final Words
As conclusion, here are a few takeaways I want you to get out from this post…
Working from home is getting more appealing to both employees and businesses because its obviously rewarding to a large extent…
But, to work from home successfully, you have to arm yourself with certain strategies and approaches that will make your work come out smoothly. And these tips is a good place to start.
So, it’s over to you now… Are you ready to start working from home like a pro? Let’s set up your virtual office and get you started. Reach us here.
Now, here’s a question for you… What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to working from home? Drop your comments below let’s discuss it together.
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