For some professional women, the dream would be to be able to work from home. But for others, having time to devote to your work without having to worry about anything going on back home is a necessity for being effective at your job. So when you’re sick or injured and can’t make it into work, it can be a real challenge to feel like you’re pulling your weight while working from a “home office”. Luckily, there are quite a few things you can try that will help to make this a little easier to pull off. To help you with this, here are three tips for making the most of the time you have to spend working from home if you’re not used to it.
Create A To-Do List The Night Before
To make sure you’re able to start your day off right, it’s best to get as prepared as you can the night before. As part of this, Tamiko Cuellar, a contributor to Forbes.com, recommends that you try to create a to-do list of all the tasks you need to accomplish. If you try to get everything down on this list the night before when you’ve got things on your mind, you’ll be much more likely to actually accomplish them rather than pushing them off once the time comes to come up with a plan for your day.
Don’t Wait Too Long To Get Going
When you’re at home, it can be much easier to think of all the other things you’d rather be doing other than getting your work done. According to Erik Devaney, a contributor to HubSpot.com, the longer you put off actually getting to your work, the easier it is to wait and wait until you’ve lost the majority of your day and still haven’t accomplished anything. Knowing this, you should try to get started on your tasks as soon as you can. Take advantage of the morning hours when you’re feeling good and ready and use that time to knock out as much work as you can.
Get Your Phone Away From You
One of the easiest things to get distracted by, when working at home or when working in the office, is your phone. However, when you’re at home, there’s no one looking over your shoulder to see how much time you’ve been spending on your home. With this in mind, it’s important that you can monitor yourself. To help with this, Abigail Hess, a contributor to CNBC.com, advises that you keep your phone out of arm’s reach when your trying to get work done. This will allow you to focus your mind completely on your work and not get pulled away from it when you get a notification every few minutes.
If you’ll be working from home for the next little while, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you do so effectively.