For most people home ends on the outside of one door and work starts on the inside of another . . . but that's not the case if you, like me, work from home.
We are the envied few, viewed as the lucky hipsters who get to work from bed. We lived in a falsely romanticized life by those who believe we get to work from cozy beds decked out in Egyptian cotton, free to work or play at our leisure.
The testy truth is that working from home is far from glamorous. It is instead an endless race to meet deadlines and oftentimes a setting aside of the conveniences a home office might bring. It wraps around us like ivy and makes us feel guilty for enjoying the everyday things that others working outside of home enjoy: An 8-5 schedule, an hour-long lunch or even a 30 minute break away from our computers.
So yes, working from home is one thing, but managing it successfully is another. It is very common, in fact, for most of us who work from home to feel like we'll never get a hang of it. We often use all of our energy and resources burning ourselves out, only to accomplish the same level of success as others who do less.
I've personally found in my own pursuit of success on the work-from-home front that the secret to doing it successfully is inviting in a contradiction and holding to structure as if we were working outside of home.
The 2 main areas where we need those limitations are:
01. Space Designing a specific space for work might burst your expectations bubble and feel trivial if you believe the best thing about working away from an office is the freedom to work anywhere you want—but in assigning one space for daily work, whether that be a room, a workshop or a section of your living room, you automatically also create the ability to switch on and off work by acknowledging that as soon as you step away from that space you finish work and when you are in it . . . to log into it.
Doing this doesn't take away from your freedom to occasionally spend a day of work at a cafe, to do it from a hotel room or even while on a plane ride to your vacations. It simply gives your brain an automatic way to switch off from your responsibilities.
02. Time This one is a hard one but it is probably one that's the easiest to take for granted or to not value, depending on your schedule.
Having a set time to work and structuring your online hours in extremely important—even for us creatives who might have a fantastic idea in the middle of the night or might feel a rush just before meeting a deadline.
Time is were we have the most freedom when we work from home; we don't have to comply to a set schedule, we just have to put the hours in. So, playing with that freedom and missing the mark is often what happens. Delimiting your time can bring you not only a feeling of accomplishment every day but also actual accomplishments. Why? Because you will be giving your 100% to each task without the interruption of a billion other things.
If you determine a clear work schedule and commit to it, you will welcome the daily pauses and breathers with a whole lot more peace of mind—and that will help you make the wheels spin with more ease on a daily basis.
In short, freedom cannot survive without structure and structure deserves a little bit of freedom. To succeed at working from home, we need to understand where our limitations lie and enjoy our work and the fruits thereof fully and freely.
What is your secret?
