No doubt, working from home is an attractive solution to work-life balance. The benefits aren’t hard to imagine: greater flexibility, less travel time, and above all, more freedom.
But running a home business is not without its challenges, either. One of the hardest aspects I found was separating work from leisure, the boundaries for which become far less clear when setting them yourself. Temptations such as overworking, or underworking, for instance, can be much greater than in a normal office environment, (especially when your workplace is just metres from the bedroom).
Flying Solo, an online community boasting over 75,000 members working from home in Australia alone, have shared some of the necessary tips and tricks of nutting down your workspace to maximise productivity.
Flying Solo share their wisdom
The best advice they have is to ensure your office is physically separate from the rest of the house. Above all, a work area needs to prompt you to work, not to waste time. It needs to look, feel, and space itself differently from what otherwise signals leisure in a natural domestic environment.
Setting your desk up in your bedroom or kitchen, for instance, won’t do – making things more muddled, and far harder to mentally switch between work-mode, and downtime.
Take operating hours, for example. As they explain in this Flying Solo article about setting work boundaries:
‘It is very tempting, especially in starting a business and securing new clients, to want to be available to everyone, any time, any day.’
But as a ‘soloist’ will tell you, dedicating as many hours as you can to a task doesn’t necessarily equal productivity, or quality. Spending two hours instead in complete concentration is far more productive than spending 8 hours at, say, 40% of that effort.
But it can’t be stressed enough just how much space matters. When stepping into your office your brain should instantly be set to work-mode, and you need your environment to trigger that switch, to provide those productive bursts. You need an office you can sit in and be inspired to work to your full potential—separate from the distractions of the house, the family, and the general reminders of winding-down.
Learn how a Harwyn pod for professionals can be specifically tailored to your work, can boost your productivity and help you conquer your work from home.