Month: September 2019

Working From Home Survival Guide – The Fundamentals of Doing Well.

My Desk Set Up.

In my last post, I wrote about my Pros and Cons of working from home. If you have not read it you may want to check it out before reading on but no worries if you don’t. This survival guide stands on its own.

Working from home, while awesome, still presents its challenges. I have pretty much worked from home my entire professional life and these are the things I focus on, and practice to be successful. This is a very fundamental list, but it is often the fundamentals I tend to abandon. When I feel like I am slipping up, getting behind or not running my business the way I want to, I come back to this list. These fundamentals keep me on track.

  1. Establish a Work Schedule

This is not the schedule of your daily work activities, that comes later, this is the schedule that everyone else in your life is aware of. It can be tricky to manage and plan the day to day activities for my family if my schedule is a Wild Card. One of the Pros of working from home is the flexibility over your schedule but for the sake of consistency with my family, I have established a set work schedule. My family knows what time I head into my office and until about what time I finish up. Not only is this good for my family to know my schedule, but also it leads to a consistent pattern for my work, and consistency is good.

2. Have a Dedicated Work Area

This one is a no brainer right?

Ideally, this area is a separate and closed off office with doors and privacy. If not that, at least an isolated area in your house where you can separate from whatever else may be going on. If you live alone or have your entire house to yourself all day, it’s a bit different in that regard. Regardless, here is why working in a separate dedicated space is so important if you aren’t already, at least in my experience. Aside from the obvious reason of other house activity, I find that having my own separate space helps keep my mind right. Some of my Cons discuss how it can be challenging to separate the work and home mindsets when you work from home as well as the distraction of simply being in your home. Having a dedicated workspace draws a real clear boundary where all of my work stuff lives and keeps me and my. mind off of all the other potential distractions on the other side of the door.

3. Go with a Desk Set Up That Works for You

Once you have established a dedicated work area, get your desk and workstation set up in a way that works for you. I set up a simple and light, inexpensive desk. It is conducive to both my style of work and my personal style. On my desk is one laptop, two monitors, my notebook, and whatever else I might need. (see title pic) This makes it easier for me to work as efficiently as possible. My set up is all about functionality and simplicity. I believe as long as it works for you, there is no wrong way to do it.

4. Establish a Routine, Workflow and Systems

This is how you work. I have a routine in place I follow on a day to day basis. It begins with how I organize and prioritize my day right out the gate. From there all the different things I do for work have a specific system or process they follow. I rely on accounting software and a CRM to help manage these systems as well as other systems I have put into place. Aside from ultimately getting things done, having a set routine and a system in place for everything I do allows me to be efficient, consistent and thorough. Having a consistent approach to how I operate daily keeps me in control. For me, this feeling of control seems to alleviate stress and anxiety about work-related items.

5. Get Organized – Stay Organized

Simple Really. Get an organization system in place for anything that you need to keep track of. My business relied on paper files for years for which an extensive filing system was put in place. In the last few years, I have transitioned everything to digital files and records. Effective organization is not only important for work reasons, but it also keeps clutter to a minimum and prevents confusion down the line.

6. Get Your Work Done

At the end of the day, not much else matters if you don’t get your work done. Just Work!

7. Repeat then Repeat Again

It’s all good when you are productive and getting work done with systems and routines in place, but irregularity will destroy momentum. The key is to be consistent and keep doing it. Especially considering working from home can be an environment where it is easy to check out and slack off. For me, there is no oversight so it is important to not only identify the activities critical to success but to do them consistently. The momentum of success is an outcome of consistent activities.

In closing, possibly the best thing about working from home is the freedom and flexibility it offers. I spend time focusing on these things so I can give myself more time to finish days early and spend that time with my family. So take advantage of the freedom and enjoy it. Work hard, play hard.

Is Working From Home Awesome? Here are my Pros and Cons

It’s fair to say that there is a trend taking place of more people working from home. Whether it is companies transitioning to a remote working format, a small business owner who works from home full time, or a start up being built after work. Whoever it is, more than ever, the home office is in play, and I am willing to bet we are going to see this trend continue.

For me, it’s really all I know. With the exception of a brief 8 month stint renting cars, I have worked from home my entire professional life. For three years as an employed outside sales rep covering a territory, and the last seven and half years self employed. Over the last ten and a half years I have had several conversations and discussions with people of what it is like to work from home. I’ve heard everything from people who envy my situation to others who outright despise the thought of it for themselves. So, I have taken those conversations and come up with my list of Pros and Cons of what it is really like to work from.

Keep in mind, these Pros and Cons come from my personal perspective and experiences, so these may vary for others. Your home life situation will play a major roll in this obviously. For me, I work for myself running a B2B sales operation. I have a wife, 3 young kids, and one dog. None of my kids are old enough to be in school full time yet therefore I am in the house regularly with 3 to 4 other people, as well as the dog.

So let’s start with the Pros.

Pro: No overhead.

Being self employed this is a big one for me. Working from home eliminates office space rent, as well as the additional utilities and expenses that go along with it. Even if you are an employee working remotely from home, there is a cost savings for the company by not having to have all the space required for a remote employee group to be in house. These cost savings benefit the bottom line ultimately and extend into compensation.

Pro: No Toxic Office Environment

A bad culture, forced social structures and office politics, are the things I despise the most. I understand that some offices do a really good job creating a positive environment. For me, it simply isn’t worth it. I love that I don’t get caught up in petty issues and office politics. In addition to that I know so many people that always seem to have that one person in their office that makes it hard for everyone else. Whether they are innaprpriate, annoying, a kiss ass or whatever, it is distracting and takes away from the experience. Sure the social dynamic can be nice but it also can feel forced and time consuming. I get into this a bit more in the “Cons” section but for me, I prefer to be left out of all of it and just work. I can think of so many people that like what they do, but hate their job. If that is the case, it’s typically due to the environment in which you work.

Pro: Flexibility for the Unexpected

Things come up. Kids get sick, toilets clog, cars get flats. There is no shortage of things that can happen unexpectedly. Being home allows me to be a part of these situations as much as possible rather than troubleshoot them from an office as best I can. It’s great for the little things like keeping an eye on a napping kid while my wife runs out real fast as well as for the big ones like a sick kid. 90% of the time these things have little impact on me and when they do it is usually something I can adjust to accommodate. For me, I would rather be home for something when needed unexpectedly and figure out work stuff later than not be here and part of the solution. This flexibility helps tremendously with a lot of little things in the long run.

Pro: The Control

This is the big one. Think of all the things in your life that you can not control when you have to conform to an employer office structure. When you take away the commute, the dress code, the required start and stop time, already, your life is given an incredible amount of flexibility. Getting back all that time puts you in control of your schedule. Once at home you are free to wear what you want, eat what you want, when you want where you want etc,. You are in control of your environment, your office, your set up, everything. Think of all the freedom and simplicity that being in your own home offers. Control over all the little things are great, but, what really locks it up in the long term is the flexibility in how you operate within your work. The ability to be as efficient as possible and therefore freeing up more time for other things in your life.

At the end of the day, if done correctly, working from home can put you in the driver seat of both your professional and more importantly, personal life. For me, work is no longer something that controls me and dictates my day to day motions that my personal like has to conform around. This is the biggest reason I feel working from home is awesome. It is that control you get from it.

So everything is awesome right? Well not exactly, not always at least. While working from home does offer all of these upsides there are still some down sides that should be considered. Again, based on my experience these are struggles that go with working from home rather than in an office environment.

Con: The Isolation

Yup, you’re all alone. I referred to this earlier in the Pro Section. While there can be a benefit to not having to deal with a toxic office environment, that is really a two sided situation. The fact is, I do not have co workers around I can chat with or discuss work things with. No one to vent to, ask for help or grab lunch with. After a while this isolation can get boring and make work feel monotonous. It is easy to get in your own head about things and lose sight of the big picture.

Activity outside of work will play into how this impacts you as well. In the summer this is not much of a problem for me. But, it gets cold where I live, really cold, and dark, which means there are a lot of days I not only do not leave the house, I don’t so little as go outside. This isolation and lack of a social dynamic during those times of the year can be difficult mentally which impacts work, enthusiasm, drive, motivation etc,.

Con: Using your Own Resources

While not a huge deal nowadays, not being in an office does separate you from some nice resources. These can represent a small inconvenience but over time can get aggravating. Things like technology, internet access, an IT department, as well as a basic office supply closet are all things that you are giving up.

For me, it is the small unexpected annoyances like having to run to the store when I discover my printer is out of ink, or paper. Not a huge deal but these little things take me out of my rhythm. Suddenly a half hour errand can throw a whole day off. Tech issues can also be a headache. I don’t have an IT department so I am on my own with tech issues. Again, the time to troubleshoot these things can throw my day off and be aggravating.

Con: Separating the Work and Home Mentality

The idea of bringing your work home is pretty common. Whether it is actual work, or the stress and aggravation of work that manifests itself into behaviors at home, working from home vs working in an office really won’t make much of a difference. What working from home can do is exacerbate this if you are prone to it. Sometimes the simple physical transition into and out of an office, like a commute, can assist with a mental transition as well. Offices also have that common culture you become a part of. At the end of the day, when your office is in your house, that physical and cultural transition doesn’t really exist, so the mental transition isn’t always so concrete. With a home office, you are in the same space essentially as your work which can make it difficult to separate the two mentalities. This challenge plays both ways too. It’s not just leaving the office at the end of the day and shutting down the work mind, but getting into the office at the beginning of the day and getting into the work mind as well.

Con: The Distractions

Of the people I know who transitioned to working from home and it didn’t last, this is what ultimately sent them back to an office. Distractions are everywhere in life and when you work from home they don’t go away, they increase. Especially in a house with young kids and pets. Play dates, temper tantrum, doorbells, dogs barking, kids coming and going from your office are all distractions in the house that offices don’t typically have. Bigger than those obvious distractions however, is the distraction of simply being in your home. Just knowing that access to all the comforts and features of my house are right outside my office can be enough to keep me distracted. There is no oversight in the house, which means I can do whatever I want, and that is distracting. Especially when work is the last thing I want to do.

Con: Professional Perception?

This one is more specific to my situation of being self employed and running my business out of my home. For now, this is something I think about as a possibility, and isn’t based on any real fact or evidence to suggest it is true at this point.

Being in sales, I am constantly working on developing new business with new customers. I can’t help but wonder how it is perceived by a customer, if they know I work from home. I sometimes worry that I am written off because I do not have the traditional office and employee structure. That the lack of that traditional office structure somehow labels me as small time and not capable on the same level as other options out there. 

Another potential perception issue has to do with how friends and family view and value your time. Because of my situation, I do have increased flexibility and freedom. However, the benefits of flexibility and freedom can be confusing to some people, and honestly rightfully so. This confusion can lead people to believe you are free and available for all sorts of things. I have had to establish my situation with some people so that they understand I am not on call for favors and errands whenever they might need them.

At the end of the day, working from home is awesome in my opinion. While there are some drawbacks to it, for me, the Pros outweigh the Cons significantly. I get to enjoy more freedom and flexibility to spend time with my family and do other things I enjoy.

Make no mistake, to reap the benefits of this lifestyle requires serious discipline and work ethic. Sure anyone who works from home can spend most their time golfing, but if you are not getting it done in the office, none of it will last.