Work From Home Hack - My Life Is So Much Better Now That I Did This...
Introduction
One of my favorite topic to talk about is the little hacks and tweaks that I do to make my life a little better as a guy who work from home.
There are amazing benefits of working from home but there are real downsides that we must all guard against such as isolation and getting trapped by the feeling having to keep ourselves busy from 9 to 5.
Today, I'll talk about the later because I am so guilty of it.
Mindset Shift and Getting Clear About The Issue
As someone who work remotely, we are not paid to be busy, we are paid for getting stuff done. How long it takes ultimately doesn't matter. If you are able to get everything done within a 2 hour period, theoretically, you should be able to walk away from your desk.
But that's rarely what happens.
We have been programmed, through the education system as well as the normal job market, to work for 8 hours / 5 days week. Its tough to shake this habit out of our system. We can, however, change that habit if we feel like no task is falling through the cracks.
Scheduling Tasks
So what I did, for my particular case, was to take the 12 or so clients that we have and make a list of everything that should be done on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis and organize it on an excel spreadsheet.
That took me a lot of time to d since I never done that exercise before. It was liberating. One thing that kept me in front of my desk was to have the constant impression that things fell through the cracks. Basically, I lacked clarity when it came to what I had to get done. Now that I broke down what had to be done, I was able to use my favorite to do list app: Todoist well.
This app as some amazing scheduling capability that I am still discovering everyday. It's truly fabulous. For example, I was able to schedule a reporting task for "every last workday of the month". Boom! I haven't found any other apps that can do something like that.
I completely wiped my todoist and started fresh. Then I created a project for each of my client and decided on what day of the week I was going to place each client. Finally, I scheduled all the repeating tasks into it.
Now that it is done, I'm able to come to my workday, already knowing exactly what I should be doing for that day only.
Conclusion
I know that it is much more difficult if you are in a situation where you constantly work on projects that must be moving forward. For 3 years, I had to do that...but now that all of our clients are in place and running their operation, I can do maintenance and optimization. I love my job more than ever now that I know exactly what should be done to move the ball forward each and every day.
I like your suggestion of using an app for management purposes.
I also work from home. There are several steps I take to avoid the pitfalls you describe. One, I completely separate my work area from the rest of the house, to make sure not to get into the habit of keeping work in different parts of the house; especially to keep work out of my bedroom.
Two, I dress the part. I never know when I will have to do a video chat, or have actual visitors. So, each day, I "dress for work". As part of dressing for work, I get my hair done, shop, get manicures and pedicures, etc.
Three, I take breaks, lunch, and set timetables for each task. I also track how much time I spend on different tasks. It is a way for me to judge my efficiency and the monetary value of my time. As part of my marketing and networking, I attend community meetings and local business association meetings and events. Then, I set aside time for non-work activities: exercise, visiting, entertaining, hobbies, etc. These things keep me in touch with my human side. Lol.
Thank you for posting about this app. I will use it to become even more efficient. Time is money. I already follow you, and I upvote you for this post.
absolutely right on "dressing the part". It's a really powerful concept.
Dressing for work would surely put you in work mode. Good hack 👍
@cryptoctopus,
Wow friend, you answered one of the major concern of mine! In my job as IT person I have to deal with lots of out side services and Maintenance Schedules! Sometimes I missed them (actually forget those tasks) and get lots of troubles as well!
Then I found STEEMIT and now it seems like a HELL! Coz I am addicted here and Job :O (Oh that's hurt) So, this is better, I was thinking about how to make schedules and plan everything! I hope this App has demo version to test it! Then I will purchase it!
This is an amazing life hack! Yeah thank you very much for sharing such useful information with us! Really appreicate it!
Cheers~
This is a great hack. I think another issue many face when working from home is distractions. Even if it's not people distracting you, sometimes it's just things to do in the house and it's difficult to turn a blind eye when this needs to be done, or that needs attention.
Thanks for the post. The flexibility to network is much better when you work from home but you need to push yourself to get out of the house. Coffee shops work well for me.
And I do not see any disadvantages at all, in that who works at home if you do everything to unlock everything. If there are even minuses but much less than pluses.
@cryptoctopus - Sir, professionally I'm a house wife lol.... I do have a daily schedule... Sometimes people might neglect our tasks.... With 2 years old child I also have to do a lot of works.... But my husband need this type of application.... Continuously working and forgetting valuable things & dates of life can't be accepted... So, I wish to share this info with him.... I don't think my limited but heavy tasks can be added into this app....
Life is for enjoy.... not to suffer by ton of works.... Useful information Sir.... To get more audience, I wish to ReSteem your post.
+W+ [UpVoted & ReSteemed]
fantastic post, in such busy life it's difficult to remember all the tasks and it's great if we have such app which remind us our tasks in this way we can't miss important schedules and tasks, i just check out the app and it's really looking quite promising, thank you very much for sharing your experience with us it's really helpful, Stay blessed.
Nice post! I've recently started working as a freelancer translator (I'm about to graduate from university as a translation specialist) and I can truly feel that need to be busy 9 to 5.
Except it's not about 9 to 5.
To be more specific, I can't help but feel every moment not spent working is a moment wasted. It's become a bit hard to enjoy my free time because of it... Well, there are several factors contributing to this but I won't go into details.
Something that has really helped me not only to keep myself organized and productive but also to realize how much I've worked and gotten done is keeping a "Bullet Journal". I definitely recommend it.
Upvoted and followed!
The biggest obstacles with working from home is distractions. But I think if you could follow your schedule religiously that that won't be much of an issue. I'll be checking out this todoist as it looks like a pretty good way to stay on track with the schedule.
I am happy for you that you found a way to simplify your life. Time management is a great way to de-clutter ones day. Very nice post.