Work alone or from home?
How to “have a party” while working
By Kaare Bøje
These guidelines are for the people who work mainly at computers during their workday, but the rules can also be used by all who work alone or from home. Although most of the things are quite obvious, people tend to forget them. Be confident in yourself and try not to lose control.
One of the things I’ve taught myself is to work smart – not hard. If you work too hard you will never get to see anything else than the inside of your home/office, and we can’t have that. Working smart is not about taking advantage of other people or cheating yourself. It’s optimizing your daily work life, and getting more spare time.
How do you keep yourself motivated? Is this what you really want? Can you take the pressure? Is the relationship between you and work based upon passion??
So many questions and even more answers, and that’s why I’ve created this article series, as I really couldn’t find some basic guidelines about working alone which suited me.
1. Scheduling – I’ve got a plan
Make a simple plan which is realistic, take advantage of the fact that you work from your home. One work day consists of 4 periods: morning, day, evening and night. You decide where to put the hours, but ensure that it matches a normal work week – at minimum.
2. The boss – Make your own rules
Stay on top of it all, you’re the boss, but you’re also the simple worker who needs to get things done.
Create that set of rules which makes you the perfect boss and employee at the same time. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Keep on motivating yourself.
3. Focus – Clear
Stay sharp and only work on those projects that you can manage in your head. Having 10 projects open at a screen doesn’t mean that you can cope all of the information and multitask several assignments. You are not a computer.
4. Stand up – get down
Have the normal breaks, use your body, take a walk or do some exercises. It’s important that you don’t get stuck in the same position. If you have a laptop it’s easy to adjust your work positions.
5. Sunlight and remember to breath
Get some sunlight if possible, it can get you away from thinking in circles, it gives you energy and we all need that now and then. Breathing exercises can be important if you lack energy, 90% of the energy we use comes from oxygen.
6. Do you like music?
Find your favorite radio station. Avoid those with long dialogues or interviews, it will distract you and you’ll have to rebuild focus again and again and…
Some people like listening to advanced music, but this can slow down your work progress as you might tend to “get into” the music (just as if it were an interview or a complex dialogue).
7. Application hell
Consider closing some of your applications/programs that you don’t use. Skype, MSN, Email client and all those social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
8. Networking
One person can’t do it all. We can all get lonely, so search for local opportunities within your field of work , become a mentor or maybe sign up for a course where you meet likeminded.
9. From now on
Keeping your promises, not only towards other people, but also when it comes to yourself. Taking a day off means taking a day off.
10. At the end of the day
You need to sum up things, and be honest to yourself. Did you do what was required from you today?
In the end it’s all about motivation, discipline, scheduling and of course having fun.
This is the first article briefly describing the things I find important when working alone either at home or at an office. The next articles will go in depth with each of the 10 stages – stay tuned!
Ps. Now, get back to work, but don’t forget what you’ve just read.
