by Ray Keating
The Keating Files – March 13, 2020
With so many businesses having employees working from home due to the coronavirus, my response is: “Welcome!” I’ve had a home office for just about 29 years. It’s kind of sobering to ponder, but the work-at-home gig began for me way back in 1991.
With this long track record, here’s a quick 11-point guide to working from home based on my experiences.
1. You Better Love Your Job. If you don’t enjoy, are indifferent, or positively dislike your job, then working from home might not go so well. Working in your house or apartment means that all kinds of interesting distractions lurk, from binging Netflix, getting lost online, playing with the dog, or suddenly being interested in chores around the house – from cleaning the gutters to fixing the bathroom toilet. If you don’t like your work, those distractions can become quite tempting.
2. Carve Out a Workspace. Working from home and Wi-Fi allows for getting stuff done on your laptop probably anywhere in your home – and I certainly do that. However, the most productive time usually is found in an actual home office. Since the coronavirus has people working at home who normally don’t, you might not have the space for an actual office. But other spots around the house can work in a pinch, such as a dining room or kitchen table, or even a bedroom. But if working at home is going to be for a long haul, space away from the traffic of daily life is a big plus.
3. Boost Productivity by Focusing on Objectives, Goals and Completing Projects, Not the Clock. Working from home shouldn’t mean doing the 9-to-5 thing. Instead, the home office – away from the traditional workplace setting – allows for focusing on accomplishing objectives or goals, such as completing projects, and then perhaps taking a break – even a quick jaunt to the park or beach – before moving on to the next item on the to-do list. It’s about meeting deadlines, not about the exact time spent at the desk.
4. Eliminating Meaningless Meetings. Productivity also gets a boost thanks to, for the most part, eliminating the plague of meaningless, wasteful meetings. Meetings generally suck up time and grind work to a near halt. (Can you tell I hate meetings?) Working at home means few, if any, meetings, and that’s productivity heaven.
5. Discipline and Deadlines Rock. My time as a weekly newspaper columnist taught me the many benefits of being disciplined, in particular, via deadlines. Lots of people (most?) don’t like deadlines, but when embraced, deadlines not only require discipline with time and effort (that is, less waste), but actually benefit creativity. Too often, when working independently, delay can become the default setting, and nothing gets done. Nothing getting done means, by definition, no creativity. Deadlines mean that projects must get done, and this winds up serving as an impetus to creativity.
6. Independence Required. Whether faced by something like the coronavirus or being considered for other reasons, working from home requires the ability to work independently. If that’s not you, then you need to learn quickly or suffer accordingly.
7. Enjoy the Flexibility. While the 9-to-5 workplace can be rather regimented, one of the great benefits of having a home office is flexibility. This goes back to the aforementioned focusing on getting projects done and goals met, rather than being a slave to the clock. A project focus means far greater workday flexibility, and that is one of the great benefits of working at home. Indeed, enjoy the flexibility.
8. From Commuting to What? Working at home eliminates the commute. I went from commuting to lower Manhattan – almost two hours each way every day – to no commute at all. It pays to think about how to use that time gained in ways that improve your life. The key is to make it a conscious decision; otherwise, opportunities – whether on the career front or in family life, for example – can be lost.
9. Don’t Let Work Take Over. As I noted earlier, enjoying your work is crucial when working at home. However, it then can be easy to let your work takeover or crowd out other aspects of your life. This is a work-at-home risk that you need to guard against.
10. Great Tunes. Working at home allows for working in a manner that can improve your outlook and productivity, but also in a way that perhaps wouldn’t cut it in a more traditional workplace. For me, it’s music. Music has a powerful effect on my mood and outlook, so I have assorted playlists at the ready to get me in the right frame of mind to, in my case, write. And yes, I play it loud.
11. Start a Business? Finally, use time working at home due to the coronavirus to explore opportunities. Namely, use this as a test run to see if becoming an entrepreneur is for you. If the working independently and creatively thing holds great appeal, then explore starting up a business. That doesn’t mean that you have to quit the fulltime gig – indeed, most of us cannot afford to do so – but your own business can be fulfilling in many ways, can supplement the family income, and can eventually become what you do fulltime. If you’ve ever thought about being an entrepreneur, then a stint of working from home can help you decide.
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