I have been working from home for the best part of the last seven years. It brings a lot of great things like flexibility and work-life balance (I prefer work-life integration) benefits, but it can take a little getting used to.
I’ve spoken to many businesses that are transitioning to a work from home model for the foreseeable future due to the current global health concerns, so I wanted to share some of the lessons I’ve learned through trial and error over the years to help others succeed at this transition.
1) Plan Your Ideal Week
Every Sunday I take half an hour to plan out the details of my ideal week. I focus on the top three things in each area of my life that I need to complete in the week ahead in order for it to have been a ‘successful’ week.
There are a few reasons behind this approach:
i) Planning only for the top three things makes my ‘to-do’ list seem more manageable, and also lets me focus first on the most important tasks before I get into the ‘busy-work’ that will distract me from the really important stuff.
ii) Planning across all areas of my life – I use Business Work, Client Work, Life Admin & Me Time – means that I am prioritising everything equally. My Massage is equally as important as that Client Report in making my week wholistically successful.
I use a project management tool called Asana (but any to-do app, whiteboard or piece of paper will do!) to plan out my important tasks, and then block time out in my calendar to complete each of them.
We all know that plans never go to plan but having one source of truth for my ‘ideal week’ means things get missed less often. If something comes up that means I need to shuffle things around, I’m doing it all from within my calendar so I can effectively re-prioritise instead of just focusing on the things that ‘scream the loudest’ first.
It also means that my team have visibility to what I’m working on and when, so they know when they can/should interrupt me and when I’m working on focus-heavy activities.
Pro Tip: Use your Busy/Tentative/Free time strategically – especially if you use any scheduling apps like Calendly for external people to book time into your diary. I have actual meetings and non-negotiables, including preparation or travel time blocked out as ‘Busy’ time, and then time I’m planning to work on a specific task as ‘Tentative’, so new meetings can be booked in this time if needed.
2) Commit To Your Morning Ritual
It can be tempting when working from home to enjoy a sleep in, get up, make your coffee and jump online straight away. While this may seem to be great for productivity, I’ve found it actually achieves the opposite.
I now dedicate the first 2-3 hours of my day to my morning ritual. I get up early, meditate, go for a walk or do some sort of exercise, make a healthy brekky and read/listen to a podcast, audio-book or ted talk. I avoid checking my emails, scrolling through social media or focusing on the problems I need to solve.
This practice means I feel like I have done something for myself before I start my work day, and as a massive bonus, I can repurpose the time I would otherwise spend on a commute to nourish my mind, body & spirit instead. Incorporating movement of some kind also offsets the more sedentary nature of a work from home environment, as you won’t be doing your usual walk to & from the station, or in-between meeting rooms like you would in an office environment.
Taking this time for myself makes me more focussed, more productive and improves my energy levels throughout the day.
3) Track Your Time
As many of you will know – what gets measured gets done, and without data you are missing critical insights on how to fix, change or improve things that aren’t working (or to even know if they aren’t working in the first place).
For some of you, your company may put productivity tracking in place as part of a work from home strategy, but even if they don’t, I strongly encourage you to keep your own records of time spent.
This doesn’t have to be on an individual task by task basis – just a logical grouping that provides useful insights on how your time is divided. Personally, I track the time I’m spending across general categories of work, i.e. Marketing, Sales, Team, Strategy, Finance & Operations tasks. This helps me ensure that I’m spending my time where it really matters.
One of the traps that it can be easy to fall into when working from home is working too much! While some of the stigma associated with offering work from home capability is that employee’s will ‘slack off’, I’ve often found the opposite to be true. Perhaps through a fear of being perceived to be slacking off, or a less interrupted day, or having more time to spend due to the lack of commute – I generally find that both myself, my team and my clients get more done when they are working remotely than when they are in the office.
Therefore, keeping track of your time can help create awareness so you know when it’s time to put work down, so you don’t end up burning yourself out with this new work practice.
There are lots of tools that you can setup for free as a solo user to do this. Check out Harvest or Toggl or Google the current apps to find the one that works for you.
4) Create Your Productivity Zone
Your physical working environment is critical to your productivity and enjoyment of both your work and personal time. I’m a big believer in the concept of mapping zones in your space for particular things – for example your bedroom should be established a relaxing, quiet space for sleep and rest. If you consistently use this space for something mentally active like work or study, then you will send your brain mixed messages about the space – making you sleepy during work time and mentally active when it’s time to sleep.
For your productivity and effectiveness in life and work, I strongly recommend creating specific ‘zones’ in your house that you reserve for work, rest and play.
Ensure that you create a dedicated workspace that enables you to sit straight and maintain a healthy posture, has good lighting and encompasses the generally adopted rules of work health and safety setup. Most organisations will require you to have an appropriately configured space to approve you working from home long term.
Despite this, it can be tempting (especially as the weather cools down) to curl up on the couch under a blanket with your laptop perched on your lap. While this is fine to do on occasion, over time it will only muddle up the relaxation zone of your couch with work energy, impacting both your work and relaxation time.
In addition to this, many people have their own personal patterns that impact their productivity, such as only being able to feel productive if dressed in work clothes, or not being able to switch off their work mind at the end of the day.
There are a wide variety of strategies to overcome these challenges, so I recommend trialling what works for you and adopt it religiously to create your own personal ‘productivity zone’ – covering both where you do your work, and the conditions you adopt to distinguish this zone from the rest of your space.
Here are some ideas:
- Have a dedicated work space as detailed above – in a spare room if that’s possible. Some people find it best to be able to close the door at the end of the work day.
- Have a specific playlist that you play to get yourself in a work mindset, or wear headphones to shut out other household sounds and create focus.
- Have a start-of-day and end-of-day ritual that transition in and out of your work mindset.
- If you are using a common space (i.e. your dining table) that is used for multiple ‘zones’, have a specific setup to distinguish it from one to the other (i.e. a specific chair, a spot for your water, a plant, a monitor or laptop stand setup in the same place each day during work time, and then transition to a tablecloth or table runner with table mats when the space is in use for family meals). Create a ritual of this transition to avoid the zones bleeding into one another.
Everyone will have their own personal preferences in creating their zone. I personally find that wearing comfy clothes, putting headphones on, closing doors to my bedroom & the kids room, having fresh air & natural light, and setting up a dedicated work space create my productivity zone. Experiment a little to find yours.
5) Take Time For Breaks & Team Interaction
If you are used to working from home for one day a week or on ad-hoc occasions, you might find that you love the quiet, uninterrupted time to get stuff done! I do too. When you are working from home full-time, this lack of interaction can be isolating and impact team collaboration.
I find it helpful to have short catchups with my team more frequently in a remote working environment rather than the less frequent face-to-face meetings I might otherwise have. We use Microsoft Teams, but there are heaps of collaboration tools available like Slack or even Facebook Messenger that can easily enable remote team interaction.
These tools don’t need to only be used to discuss work questions – try to create a similar style of interaction on these tools that you would if you were working side-by-side – share a picture of the beautiful waterfall you visited on the weekend, ask for movie or book recommendations and share your day-to-day wins & frustrations with gifs & emojis.
Use presence states to indicate when you are available, busy or away from your desk so that your team members know when they can ‘approach you’ to ask a question, the same way they could visibly see if you were at your desk or not in a face-to-face world. Also look into settings about notifications when using these apps so you don’t get interrupted by social chatter when trying to complete a high-focus-task.
Where possible, use Video Conferencing tools like Zoom or Skype or Microsoft Teams to create face-to-face connection during meetings – body language is still the majority player in the communication equation, so facilitate team visibility wherever possible to maintain trust and connection between the team.
Remember also to take breaks often. Diarise them if need be to get you into a good break rhythm or coordinate your break times with team members and have a quick video chat at the determined time if you are the type of person who thrives on social interaction. In a work-from-home world, we’re now stationary for meetings, and the kitchen is just a few steps away for heating up our lunch or making our coffee. I like to take a quick break at the completion of each task, even if it’s just to stand up and walk around for 1-2 minutes, filling up my water bottle or having a stretch.
Finally, to make remote working successful longer term, it works well to have an all-team gathering periodically to enable great collaboration and solidify relationships. I have a quarterly hackathon that brings my team together from across the country to work on a shared objective, followed by a team outing so they can connect socially also. I also connect with each of my interstate team by meeting them for lunch/coffee when I’m in their home town, or scheduling ‘HQ working bee’ days where those located in Sydney join me at my home for the day.
Successful remote working practices can have massive benefits including improved productivity, environmental benefits and financial savings. While there are some challenges to be overcome in doing this successfully, we are in an age where technology is a great enabler to create a high-functioning remote working capability.
We’d love to hear about your experiences establishing work-from-home practices in your team – leave us a comment and any of your own top tips!!
If you are looking to establish better work-from-home capability or operating rhythms, reach out and chat to one of our team on athena@athenaconsulting.com.au.
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About the Author
Frances Quinn is an award-winning CEO & Founder, an experienced speaker, facilitator and mentor, and a passionate customer futurist.
Starting from humble beginnings - leaving school and home at 16 to make her way in the customer contact world, Frances forged a successful career path for herself, quickly climbing the corporate ladder and gathering a strong reputation for excellence along the way.
After 20 years in the corporate world, Frances set out on her next adventure as an entrepreneur and business owner, applying her versatile set of skills to building a successful high-growth consulting firm.
Frances' passion and expertise lies in creating customer loyalty, driving operational efficiency and excellence, and implementing successful and sticky change in organisations large and small. She has worked with large global brands and startups alike.