Working from home

Foreword: Everything you see at Why working from home is both awesome and horrible, at the Oatmeal is true.

Summer's almost over###

While planning for the upcoming fall, I came to realize that I’ve been working from home (or anywhere but a traditional office) for the best part of the last year. Now while this has proven to be quite liberating, there are definite downsides as well. After a quick look on Google, it seems that this is old news to the vast majority of home based workers, so I’m not going to spend too much time jabbering away on it.

First and foremost###

If I could go back to September 2013, I’d make sure to have a clearly separated office space to begin with. It’s extremely difficult to motivate yourself to be productive right away if you’re trying to pull out your laptop and work emails at your breakfast table on a daily basis (assuming you enjoy your breakfast even half as much as I do). Especially so if you work for yourself which is usually a synonym for no one being there to look over your shoulder. The positive flipslide is of course that you can spend your nights working if that suits you better. But for me, I definitely have to wake up very early to get most stuff done. Also, whenever you’re not running on tight deadlines, it’s ridiculously easy to find more suitable things to do at home.

My top 5 to conquer working at home###

In a random order:

• Have a separated office space.
• Wake up early to get stuff done, and make sure you always have a daily todo list ready for the next day.
• Even though there’s no one around you, act like a champ. It’s harder to set your mind to sales calls in your boxer shorts.
• Even if you’re not running on deadlines, make some up.
• Go out.