Home Office: how to organize yourself to have an efficient work routine from home

In many countries, the Home Office is still far from the norm, but working from home is already a reality for many people.

I love working from home. I consider the Home Office a significant improvement in modern work, thanks to the communication facilities that the internet can bring.

Of course, there are some professions less prone to this change than others due to the nature of their work and specific structural difficulties. However, in particular activities, it is entirely feasible to reduce commuting to the office while doing our activities in the comfort of our own home.

Usually, the most popular professions using Home Office are Design and Multimedia, followed by IT professionals and Programming, Translation, and Content Managers.

Much of the research on telecommuting or Home Office has indicated the policy tends to benefit employees and their employers more than it detracts. Data analysis from Global Workplace Analytics, which looked at the findings from more than 4,000 studies, revealed twice the number of upsides to downsides. Employees who telecommute are happier, more productive, and leave companies at a lower rate.

However, turning your home into a workplace, despite the advantages, also has numerous pitfalls that require your attention.

Preparing the environment

I am a Project Manager at IBM, and I have four regular days plus 1onefree day of Home Office per week, going to IBM offices only for some specific meetings, on-premises training, and other activities. So I transformed my home in my workplace using some techniques and some considerations that I would like to share here in this article.

In the first moments, I found myself in need of all sorts of things and realized that I would have to get myself to get the objects I needed, unlike when you are in an office, where it is common for someone to solve these details for you.

I recommend you always keep a list of everything you notice that is missing. Then always keep a stock of these things and keep them within easy reach.

This is my first list of things that I believe should be present in every Home Office, regardless of your activity:

Essential equipment: a good and stable notebook, one tablet, paper and pen, notebooks, phone, printer ink (if you use one).

Internet: choose an as fast and reliable Do not rely solely on your modem/router. Buy a more efficient wifi router to have the best connection.

Food: It is essential to have food at home. Nothing is worse than losing a hungry time, not knowing what to eat and ending up pushing in the first fast food you find. Eating at home can be your chance to economize and eat in a minimally healthy way, making it as easy as possible for your access to better quality snacks and meals.

Transportation: You can save much money by working from home. After all, you will use much less public transportation. I do not have a car, so I use massively "on-demand" alternatives like Uber. In the end, I save money and time.

Adaptation and discipline

For many people, having a boss watching sometimes is something that makes things easier. Generally, for some collaborators, the presence of someone watching is a guarantee that if they do not arrive on time or produce in a certain way and quantity, there will always be someone to press. So either these people produce and resolve and deliver, or they will get fired. In this way, the limits and obligations while working in a traditional environment become clearer.

I am particularly very task-oriented, I can focus very well on the Home Office environment and feel much more productive working from home than in the famous and full of distractions environment called open-space.

However, setting the domestic environment as a workplace itself is not for everyone. In this case, I recommend a neutral field like Starbucks or one of the various "cafes" at your town or better yet, another alternative can be a coworking place. I recommend that you test different places to work and see which setting suits you best.

The key to enhancing your Home Office productivity is: get yourself organized, handle your distractions as much as possible, and focus on your tasks. Discipline is essential for working in the Home Office mode.

Do not be a workaholic

The paradox of flexible working is that it tends to be malleable for more, rarely for less.

It may happen that you do not stay productive 100% all day long, and you procrastinate on that critical but tedious task, then you lose track of time, you see the dawn, but you have even more work in the morning, become desperate, over time, and worst.. you may get sick. I have been like this in the past, and today I can tell you: Do not be this kind of person.

Flexible hours and freedom are, yes, benefits of remote labor, but it is essential not to let chaos come in. Sometimes you end up getting immersed and exaggerating in focus, but, it's important to remember to balance things.

Set yourself schedules, take regular breaks, get up to breathe, and do a brief stretching. Stay focused and prevent a task from stretching for longer than necessary.

Moreover, remember, never leave your power level go too much down and do not lose your sleep time due to lack of schedules. Many people forget that prolonged exposure to the bluish light of computer screens, phones, and tablets tend to worsen the quality of sleep. Some applications manage the color of the displays according to the time to prevent their circadian cycle from being messed up. Doing a google search and testing which app is better for you can help you.

Control and organize your tasks

I use Todoist, Trello, and several other applications to coordinate many of my tasks. I recently wrote an article about my favorite productivity apps, check it out here. If you prefer the excellent and old analog method, you should always have notebooks and pictures available.

You can be like me, multi-tasking or you may prefer to focus on one thing at a time, it is vital to experiment, know how you work and understand what scenarios and conditions can help you to work better.

Also, as you can see in the video... the days at Home Office sometimes can be very unpredictable, no matter how well you have planned.

I always keep my appointments (professional and personal) on online calendars (at IBM we use Lotus Notes, but I mainly use IBM Verse that is more flexible and dynamic, but you can use Outlook or Google Calendar as well) synchronized on my phone. That way, I always get a glimpse of my commitments. "

There is no perfect productivity method, and in the real world, things do not always happen as planned. There will always be that phone call or unexpected task that will change your plans. (At this moment I have a newborn daughter who has fun turning most of my ideas.) So, have flexibility is an excellent soft-skill. Relax and enjoy life.

Working straight from the comforts of our home demands a bit more planning than you may think in principle, but with discipline and attention, you can be very productive while working from home.

Do you work from home? would you like to? tell us about your experience.

See you next time,

Jair Ribeiro