For the past two weeks, we’ve been talking about work at home productivity tips that can help you make the most of your work time at home. The series continues this week with three more tips that, when implemented, can help you start getting more done TODAY. Using just one of these tips each week can really help you maximize your work time so that you can better enjoy your family time. Let’s get to it!
Psst! If you missed the previous tips, you can read them here and here.
Clean Up Your Act
Messiness seriously messes with your productivity. An uncluttered workspace will help you think more clearly, find things more easily and get more work done. In order create and maintain a tidy workspace, you need to set aside some time for decluttering. Work in 15-minute increments over the course of a few days. By the end of the week, your desk, drawers and office will be a welcoming, orderly place rather than a source of anxiety. Set aside time each day to purge, file, and put things back where they belong.
Action step: Spend 15 minutes decluttering your desk. Ahh! Doesn’t that feel better?
Block Out Time for Marketing Your Services
Unlike employees with regular pay, freelancers are only paid for the projects they’re working on. Self-promotion and marketing are essential to avoid the feast-and-famine cycle that can wreak havoc on your finances (and your ego). Set aside some time each day or week for promoting your services. This will keep you from taking “just a minute” to check blog stats or get roped into conversations on Twitter or Facebook.
Action step: Set aside 30 to 60 minutes for marketing today and every workday from here on out. Or, if your schedule won’t allow it, reserve a few hours on a particular day for marketing each week.
Stop Where You Are
With no boss to tell you to go home for the day, you can easily get trapped into working longer than you intended to is trying to finish a project when you’re so close to being done. Don’t fall into that trap. Stop wherever you are when it’s quitting time. Make a quick note if you need to remind yourself where to pick up tomorrow. Because you know exactly what your next step is, it’ll be much easier to jump into work tomorrow.
Action step: Set an alarm for quitting time. When the alarm goes off, scribble a note to yourself and close up shop.
What helps you get more done when working from home? Share a tip in the comments!
If you enjoyed this post, check out the other tips in the series.
This post originally appeared on ProductiveWAHM.
Victoria Eaves
Wednesday 22nd of April 2015
Just read through all your productivity posts! And I agree with every tip you made. For me most important is to get dressed for work (including makeup) and to step out of the house for something fun (coffee or lunch date). And of course keeping and sticking to a schedule is the bread and butter when working from home