Acclamation
In the past, I've talked about how to still be productive when you spend the day at home. This was mostly in the context of not having classes on a weekday or having to balance online classes with "in person" classes. With my jobs, there's always been some kind of work at home aspect to them, whether it's editing the website or posting on social media or even this blog is like working from home. However, I now have a regular part-time remote job where I actually need to work from home and do important things on my own time.
So, I've decided to try to document my struggles of working from home. I only say struggles because I know it's going to be hard at first, but it's also an ideal situation for me. I've been trying to find remote jobs for a while now because for my situation with work and school and moving around, it just works best for me at this stage. Now that I have that opportunity, it's time to tailor it to my work ethic, schedule and living situation to make it work.
The first thing I had to do was nail down my other work schedule and carve out specific days and time periods on other days. I wanted to ensure that I had clear cut times each week for a majority of the work to be completed or at least prepped. I narrowed my main days to be Sunday through Tuesday, as I have all three of those entirely off at the moment. Wednesday through Saturday is pretty much packed, but there's room before and after my shifts to get little projects done. So, the beginning of the week is when I'll (hopefully) get a bulk of the work completed and start planning for the week to avoid scrambling at the last minute for content to post and all of that good stuff.
The second thing that I had to do and am still going to have to work on is keeping my morale up during the day. I'd prefer to stay in the apartment because I don't want to be spending money to sit in a coffee shop because lord knows I'll treat myself to at least two caffeinated beverages because that's just the type of person that I am. However, since it is my home, I tend to start getting comfortable. I also don't live alone and I'm not too keen on ignoring my roommates for hours on end. Plus, we have a cat that also adds another layer of distraction. I'm also a stress cleaner, so if things start to feel overwhelming with work, I tend to find everything wrong with the apartment's state of cleanliness and will just go to town for however long until I realized that I've wasted precious working hours.
These are the tips that I've come up with myself for the first acclimating stage of working from home. They're simple, sure, but they've already helped during my second week of attempting this new working style.
- Do not sleep in. I'm certainly not getting up at the crack of dawn to crank out work, but I've been getting up around 7:30/8, working on my blog post and then diving into my job around 9:30/10 in the morning to keep my schedule regular. I'd rather get done with my work earlier in the day rather than later!
- Get ready! I don't put a full face of makeup on for a day of working at home (unless I have a video meeting or something, because nobody wants to see this face without at least foundation on), but I like to do the first step of my morning routine. I'll still wash my face and moisturize like normal. I'll probably brush my hair and try to style it into a cute ponytail or bun. And the key is to get out of my pajamas. I try to sleep in sweatpants now so I can put some leggings on in the morning with a cute crewneck or oversized sweater so I'm still comfortable, but also am not rotting in the same clothes I went to sleep in.
- Keep track of all assignments, both small and little, in my agenda. Yep! You can't have a post from me without mentioning my agenda. I got a specific work agenda that I keep track of my assignments for both jobs. It's probably the only thing that keeps my head on straight sometimes.
Stay tuned for stage two!
Thanks for sharing! I'm hoping to work from home one day, it's a big goal of mine! I'd love to hear how you go about finding work that you can do from home??? Good luck with everything!
ReplyDeleteHi Desiree, thank you! I got super lucky that I found a remote position. I'm not sure how many companies like to hire this way, but it's a social media centric job, so most of my work is easily done from home! If that's something you're interested in career wise, I would definitely search around for remote digital marketing jobs or even internships. Who knows, those internships might be able to turn into full-time positions! Good luck! :)
DeleteI work from home too and keeping note of what you have to do is a good way to stay on top of everything. Especially since you don't have colleagues around reminding you 'did you talk to X about Y?', I always have to make to-do lists.
ReplyDeleteExactly!!! Sometimes I need the help of co-workers to remind me of things at my other job, but it's pretty much just me on a day to day basis for my new job. I like to have to-do lists FOR my to-do lists, just so I can get into the specifics of each task so I don't forget any step! :)
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