How to be more productive when working from home

Working for yourself and from home is wonderful, isn’t it? Until it isn’t, that is. The luxury of working from home, in your own personal space, the pyjama days where you’ve brokered deals, converted enquiries into sales and even chatted to unsuspecting couples, deserves a high five in itself. Yet, being one’s own boss and working in one’s own home, which doubles up as an office space, does have its down sides. Long hours alone at a computer can promote isolation, stress and even depression. And for some, the levels of productivity may fall well below those who work in a structured office environment, where it is difficult to get away with slacking off. If you work for yourself, and your boss (you) isn’t very good at keeping you motivated or keeping you on track with your goals, then you’ll certainly be nowhere near to obtaining your employee of the month goals. Working from home makes it easy to fall into bad and unproductive habits, which are ten times more difficult to break out of. Here are some top tips for getting back on track with your home office life and making your days more productive and enjoyable. Dress for work There will be some people who have absolutely no problem putting in a full shift in their pyjamas or clothes that they wouldn’t be seen dead in outside of the house. But there are many who need to implement more of an office culture in their day-to-day work to help them promote a better working environment. This doesn’t mean having to wearing a suit or smart clothes, but getting dressed, doing your hair and looking presentable can be all you need to get you in the right frame of mind for putting in a good shift of work. Structure your day This may seem really obvious and most people do probably have an idea of what they are going to be doing once they get to work. But structuring your day isn’t just about planning in advance what to do, but also abut how to do it. Research has shown that working in blocks and working on one type of thing at a time, is more productive than multi-tasking. So if for example you plan on doing some ceremony writing, emails and admin, break them down into blocks. Schedule a chunk of time for script writing, then another block for attacking your inbox and then another block for catching up with admin, with nice break periods in time. Get out of the house One of the worst things about working from home, is not taking adequate breaks or using breaks to do things around the house, instead of properly resting. Get out into your garden, or take a walk to the shops or around the block. Completely remove yourself from in front of the computer screen and you will be surprised how refreshed and motivated you will be to get back into your work. Change your work environment once in a while Sometimes, it really pays to use a different work-space, whether it’s once a week or once a month, to booster your productivity. Changing your environment can help you to be more focused and more engaged with your work, especially because you are stepping out of the confines of your home-space with the goal of actually getting work done! There are so many cafes, libraries and custom-designed casual work-spaces (many free and some that charge a small fee) where you can go for a day or a few hours to work. It gives you a break from your everyday environment, allows you to enjoy a different place to work in and it gets you into the real world and maybe even conversing with real people. Curb your inbox Emails are inescapable, especially now that so many of us make them accessible on every device that we own. But like with your working day, emails should also have a limit. Whilst many people are happy to send and receive emails at night-time, it is still acceptable to send and reply to emails during business hours. Tips include, setting up an out of hours email responder, so that you can at least acknowledge the receipt of someone’s email. Try to set a cut off point for when replying to emails, or if you’re really strong, for reading them too! Or if you like working in the evenings, some email services all you to schedule your emails so that they send during business hours. Stay away from social media (put your phone down!) As much as you may love being social (or not), dipping in and out of social media throughout the day, can really zap away your precious work time. Have a set time to do all of your business-related social media and treat this as part of your working day, but try to keep your personal social media for outside of your work hours and keep your work hours purely for work. Unless they are urgent, whats app messages, comments on your Facebook profile, tweets and personal Instagram interactions, can all wait! Join the Celebrants Collective Facebook group If you’re not signed up to the Celebrant’s Collective already, do it now. Working from home can be so isolating and if you’ve ever worked in an office environment , it’s easy to forget how much banter and chat goes on in such environments, which research shows, believe it or not, can be good for productivity. The group is great to reach out to, if you’ve got a quick question about something, if you’re stuck for ideas for a upcoming ceremony. It’s the next best thing to having a colleague sat there right beside you. So here’s to making your days working at home, more productive ones. What do you do to make yourself more productive? Head over to the forum to join the conversation there. 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