(clapping) (snapping fingers)
(singing)
- Cool!
Hello, I'm Hannah and welcome back to my channel.
So doing this is one part of my full-time job.
I do a lot of other things as well.
I write books, my new book The Hormone Diaries
is coming out on the 30th of June, you can pre-order now,
link in the description.
But ultimately I am a full-time YouTuber,
online content creator, author,
writer, influencer, if we must.
If we must.
I do all of that for myself on my own for the most part.
Except I have an editor, obviously.
Hi Ariel.
So I work from home a lot.
Most days I spend by myself and talking to this camera
is the most talking that I will do to other people.
You're not other people, you're a camera.
I pride myself on being a very organised
and productive person, although I do not expect myself
to be productive every single day,
because that's just setting yourself up for disaster
and unhappiness and I like to take a bit more of a realistic
approach to work and productivity and balance.
Big fan of balance.
But over the years I have gotten pretty good
I think at working from home.
Yes, I have my off days, but in general I have picked up
a lot of tricks and tips and things that I do to make sure
that I get the work done even though
I'm not necessarily surrounded by other people
who are also working hard or a boss telling me what to do.
It's literally just me on my own.
I could if I wanted to just sit in my living room
and watch Netflix all day.
Like that is a real possibility and a real temptation.
The other real temptation is playing video games all day.
And I am feeling very ill today, so after I am done filming
these videos that is a genuine possibility
of something that I will do, because uh, I feel horrendous.
So I've got seven things for you that might not all work
but hopefully you can like, pick and choose
and hopefully this gives you a bit of motivation
and inspiration to get good at working from home.
So number one is get a reliable alarm
wake up getting out of bed system.
And the trick to this is just knowing what your habits are,
so are you someone who snoozes a lot,
are you someone who sleeps through alarms,
are you someone who turns off your alarm entirely
and falls back to sleep,
are you someone who just like wakes up naturally
to the crack of dawn?
Very jealous of you types.
And the second thing is to have a why.
This is really important, especially if you work
for yourself, because you could just turn off your alarm
and just be like, I will do it tomorrow, it's fine.
Because no one's telling you what to do.
So it's really important to figure out the night before
what it is you're going to be doing that morning.
So you have a why.
So when your alarm goes off in the morning,
your brain is telling you you need to get out of bed
because you have this to do, because there's this thing.
So for me for instance, my partner has a nine to five,
and if I finish my work
within that time frame,
then I get to hang out with him
in the evenings, which is great.
And also a lot of my friends work those same hours as well,
and so it means that I have the evenings and the weekends
to socialise and do things that I like.
So that is why I get out of bed in the morning.
And if you're interested, the system that I currently use,
I now keep my phone on charge overnight in my office
and I have a Google Home device by my bed,
and I just use that to set my alarm.
Number two is get dressed.
I spent so much time in my like early YouTubing
freelance days of just working all day in my pyjamas.
And I was definitely not at productive then as I am now.
And it just doesn't put you in the right mindset.
By all means, wear comfy clothes.
But just not your pyjamas or whatever you slept it.
It's all about getting yourself in a mindset
of I am working, and what you are wearing
is a big part of that.
Number three, kind of similar,
but work in a different place to where you sleep.
And again, it's about that separation of sleep,
pleasure, like downtime, non-work time to work time.
So before we moved into this place I would always work
at the kitchen table, that was my office.
And now I have like a dedicated room
to where I work and I love it.
It just really helps me be like,
oh this is the room that I work in.
But yours could be anywhere, yours could be your kitchen,
yours could be your sofa, but I just, just please,
I just highly recommend don't work from your bed.
Number four, take a lunch break.
If you are working in an office, you should get
the opportunity to take an hour for lunch
where you can leave the office and grab a bite to eat
or take whatever you brought to the office out of the fridge
and eat that at your desk and watch YouTube videos
for an hour or whatever it is
that you want to do in your lunch break.
And if you're working from home, do the same thing.
For me taking a lunch break is a great way to break up
what I'm doing, have a break, I am sat down so much,
so lunch break and making myself some food
or reheating some leftovers, whatever it is,
is one of the only times I stand up
during the day when I'm working from home.
That is another thing that I should probably work on.
But taking a lunch break when you work from home
is good for all of the same reasons why taking a lunch break
when you work in the office is good.
When I was living in my old flat
before Dan and I moved in together,
because Dan is a better cook than me,
and so he does most of the cooking, but before that
I would do my main cooking at lunch time,
so I would spend that hour like cooking a whole meal
and then I would eat that at lunch,
and then I would eat the leftovers of that at dinner.
So I really loved that as a way to like break up
my working day of doing something completely different
that still felt productive
and still felt like it was good for me.
Number five, go outside.
So this is one that I need to be better at.
It is currently 25 to one today,
and I haven't been outside yet.
I also haven't eaten yet, oh god,
I am great at taking my own advice.
I am clearly an example of how easy it is
to fall into the trap of just not leaving the house ever
if you work from home.
So whatever it is, like just for a walk around your area.
Maybe as part of your exercise routine
you go for a run in the morning.
That is usually one of the only ways
that I get outside during the day,
is if I went for a run that morning.
But yeah, I very much know how claustrophobic I can feel,
but it only comes crashing down on me at the end of the day.
Like suddenly at the end of the day I just,
I kind of go a bit mad, and I'm just like oh my god,
I need to get outside.
Even if I was like super productive
and like had a really solid work day,
if I hadn't been outside, I would just kind of feel
a bit sad and low and just a bit gluggy.
I know for me it's important to get outside
and I kind of feel like it would be for most people.
Number six, this isn't something that I've always done,
and I've kind of adopted a new method of this recently,
and it's really working.
And that is calendar blocking
or like assigning time to tasks.
And this is something that you can do working at home
or not, but just because I feel like it's easier
to kind of fall off the work and get distracted
and procrastinate when you're working from home,
I think it's even more useful and valuable
if you're working from home.
So the way that I used to do this
was instead of just having a big old to do list,
my to do list was in my calendar but it would be like
an all day event, and so I could see at the top of the day
like all of the tasks that I had to do that day.
So I still kind of do that, but what I now do
is I'll take those tasks and assign an actual time for it,
so it appears on my calendar like it would an appointment
of like you have to be here.
So like for today, I'm filming three videos today,
so it's like film this video,
film this video, film this video.
And that was like all just blocked out in my calendar
as if it was a meeting or something.
The first week that I tried that I noticed instantly
that I was procrastinating less because I would look
at my calendar and my calendar would be like,
you're supposed to be doing this.
And I'd be like, oh okay, I'll do that then.
It kind of gave me this motivation of like,
I need to stay on track because I've got X, Y, Z to do.
And it also helped me be more realistic
about how long certain tasks take me.
One of the especially useful things of this method
for me was that I used to be really bad with email.
Like I would just always have my email tab open
and then any time an email would come in
and I would see like a one go, like as an unread email,
I would like immediately stop whatever it was
I was doing and check the email.
And that was stupid, don't do that,
because it breaks up your workflow.
And I would do this for years,
and I was like why am I not being really productive?
And I would always just be like, oh, email,
oh an email, oh, oh.
So now what I do is I'll check my email
and I'll answer emails like at two different points
in the day and I can block that in my calendar,
if like for this hour you're doing emails,
and then at this hour you're doing emails,
and then when I'm not doing emails I close that tab,
and I don't even think about it, and like, no.
I still obviously get back to people in a timely manner,
but I'm not doing that at the expense of breaking up
other tasks that I'm doing and breaking up my focus.
Anyways, so that was a little email tangent,
I love talking about emails.
If anyone wants to talk about emails, like let me know.
Talk about emails in the comments.
So yes, calendar blocking.
I don't do it for everything and everyday
but like I've got a particularly busy week
and I have my big to do list of everything I have to do,
I will then go and assign it
to different days and different times.
I think it helps me be more realistic
of like what I can actually achieve in a day as well.
If you want to know more about calendar blocking
I would highly recommend watching AmyTV on YouTube
and she has a whole video about calendar blocking,
and I'll link it in the description,
and you should check it out, and she's great,
and if you go and watch that tell her that I sent you.
And finally number seven, this is a bit of a general one,
but it's probably the most important
and will just help with all of those other things.
And that is know thyself.
By know yourself, what I mean is when do you work best?
How do you work best?
What tend to be the things that distract you?
Once you understand how you work, and you understand
the limitations to how you work, then you can create
an environment in which you will be
your most productive and successful.
When I was at university I would use this software,
which the name of I forget now,
but you block certain websites.
So I was trying to write an essay,
trying to write my dissertation, trying to do some research,
and I would block Facebook, I would block Twitter,
I would block YouTube, and then I started using LinkedIn,
and I was like it's fine, I can be on LinkedIn,
because it's like professional
and it will like help me with my career.
But no, LinkedIn then just became for me another thing
that I got distracted by, so I had to block LinkedIn.
That's how you know it's bad.
So yeah, if it's blocking websites
that's the thing you have to do.
If it is putting your phone in a different room
so you can't even see it, so you don't even like think
about it, you don't acknowledge that it's there, do that.
If you're stuck on a particular piece of work
and you know going outside and taking a walk will help
with your creativity or help work through a problem,
or just forget about the problem, then do that.
If you are not a morning person don't beat yourself up
about that and don't like try and force yourself
to fit into this mould, like there are so many videos
out there that are like, my 5:00 a.m. morning routine,
and I'm like good for you.
But if you are someone who wakes up about nine
and then maybe starts work about 11
but finished work at like seven, 8:00 p.m.
or whatever, like great, do that.
Also if you're working from home and you like
get all of your work done for the day
and you haven't done a full eight hours,
great, good for you.
Go and enjoy yourself.
One of the amazing things about working from home
is that you are not limited by office rules,
says the girl who still wakes up at 7:30
and does like a 10 till six.
But I know that that is what works for me.
And it all comes back to my first point of what is your why.
So know yourself and why are you doing what you do.
What is it that's important to you, which, you know,
is the reason behind why you have to get the work done.
I hope that some or any of these tips
help you if you work from home.
If you have any other little nuggets of advice
please do leave them in the comments,
or we could just like nerd out about emails
in the comments as well.
I'm totally down for that.
Please give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it
and make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell,
and I'll see you in my next video.
(upbeat electronic music)