Tips for Working From Home | Productivity + Motivation
hey friends whether you are an entrepreneur or a writer like me and
trying to optimize your work from home life or you have suddenly found
yourself working your out of house job now at home with the craziness of the
world and you're trying to figure out ways to motivate yourself to stay on
task and to organize your day I've got you covered
I've been working from home for nearly two years now and although I wouldn't
call myself an expert and I think there's lots of different ways that you
can work from home effectively hopefully you guys can take these tips try them
out and see which one's work best for you so in this video I'll be sharing my
top tips and tools I use to work more effectively from home including how I
come up with my goals how I manage my time stay motivated minimize
distractions and if you stay till the end I'll also give you a look into what
two days in my actual work from home life looks like and if you find that you
want to learn even more I actually put together a whole work from home a
playlist that I've linked in the description of this video where I go
into some of these tips in even more depth first I want to give you one sort
of overall tip and that is to treat your work from home life like an out of the
house job and this can include things like actually get dressed in the morning
have a designated space to go to work and only do work and sort of clock in
and out of that time using a schedule now a bunch of you are probably
listening to that and being like that's sort of why I got away from I out of the
house job so I could wake up in my PJs and just do work on the couch and not
care about when I started that or when I did laundry or when I did all of those
things together and I'll just be honest and say yes when I first started working
from home and even every now and again I do just wake up in my PJs and spend all
day in them and don't do my makeup and sometimes I do work on the couch but
what I wanted to stress is that I am most productive and I get the most done
and I am really able to separate my personal and like rest life from my
business life when I one have that designated space so I'm actually going
to link in that playlist a vlog type video where I gave a tour of one of the
Rendon of what my home office looks like and I
just really set that up to just be a workspace in a space I loved to go into
and that just really helps me and my creativity and my focus stay in the
right place and I can literally go into that space do my work and then go into
the rest of my house for rest and family time otherwise if I'm up blending sort
of doing work on the couch a whole lot and not really having that separation I
tend to overwork or I tend to get distracted and not make the best use of
my time now if you're not like me and you don't have a whole nother room that
you can dedicate to adjust your work you can definitely just take a part of a
room or set up a desk in a certain space or even just a space if you have to on
your dining room table that can be your workspace especially if this is more of
a temporary thing whatever it is though make sure it is a space just for your
work so you can get there and it really helps you focus this is also a space
where I try very hard to limit distractions I also have moved to
shutting off pretty much all of the notifications on my phone so that when I
go to my phone it is because I want to not because notifications are pulling me
out of my productivity and it's also really good to just have some
communication with people in your household so that they know that when
you go to that space that it is for work and that if they need you and it's
emergency great come on in but otherwise I am working from this time to this time
and I need some peace and quiet so I can focus the other thing I really want to
do more but I do definitely less frequently is actually put on my face
and wear real clothes because it's a whole mindset thing where if I'm in my
pajamas and I'm just not feeling my best my productivity level definitely goes
down and schedule which I'm going to talk about in a lot of depth in just a
minute but that's the other thing too where I'm not setting like a time of I'm
going to start working here and then I'm going to end here I'm definitely a
person that can overwork but I know that some people too if they don't set a
schedule they can under work or they can feel like they're not working enough but
before we get too far into schedules and things like that I think the first thing
you really need to sit down and do once you have at that dedicated space
to get clear on your goals in your priorities because you can't really
organize your time and manage that effectively if you don't know what those
are now if you're more in a position where you have an employer and you're
working from home they're already hopefully giving you
those goals and priorities but if you are an entrepreneur or you're trying to
organize your writer life like I am then what I found really helpful was to
figure out three main goals and priorities for my entire year and then I
have like an eight step strategy that I then figured out how I was going to make
actionable steps on those goals quarterly monthly weekly and then daily
if you want to learn more about this process and how actually gave all of
those steps to my patrons on patreon calm and we worked through all of that
together I will link that video in the playlist that I talked about and you can
check that out later once you have your goals and priorities and again this is
whether you are setting them yourself or someone else
is for you you still have to organize your time and sort of give yourself a
schedule so you can actually take each piece of what you really need to do and
put time quantities to them because if you say hey I'm gonna get this done and
you don't set a time block for when you're going to try to get that done
then it could take so much longer than you intend for it to take so what I
really love doing is actually taking Google Calendar and using the different
color coding categories to separate into my different goals and priorities and
then set different time blocks for a regenerative schedule that sort of goes
on repeat every single week now this might be something that totally
overwhelms you and I do have a whole video in that playlist where I sort of
break down how you can do this for yourself the other thing though that I
do talk about in that video is not just setting up a schedule that you think
will work but actually spending some time tracking your hours so not just
time blocking but time tracking so even if you have a schedule or you're just
trying to figure out I would definitely say to use Google Calendar to then as
you're doing something so I'm filming a video right now I will put in maybe this
is going to take me an hour or two to film this video in my Google Calendar
and then if it takes longer or shorter when I
done I will adjust that so then I can then see how long it actually took me
and the next time I go to record a video I can then consider the information that
I found when I was time tracking maybe over the course of a couple weeks and
then adjust my normal schedule going forward so I can be more effective
with my time that was sort of a lot that I just said so again you should
definitely check out that full tutorial in the playlist if you want to learn
more but seriously time blocking and time
tracking has been such a game changer for me and my business
speaking of productivity tools like Google Calendar you should definitely
have at least one tool where you are tracking your goals and your time and
that's helping you stay focus for me I actually use three different tools my
Google Calendar my bullet journal and my Trello Kanban board I'm not going to
take time in this video to share the entire process of how I use all those
things because you guessed it I already talked about it in another video which
I'll link in that playlist but basically I took the time to really spell out how
I use each of these tools so that you guys could see the benefits and the uses
of each one and then choose which one you wanted to try or which combination
you wanted to try and see which one worked best for you one tool that I did
not talk about in any of those videos though is a brand new tool app thing
that I have been introduced to by my friends called habiddig ax and basically
it is an app that sort of meshes to-do lists and rewarding yourself with that
by turning it into a kind of video game RPG thing so you should definitely check
it out if you're into video games RPGs in it you have an avatar and that avatar
it can get weapons and equipment and pets and you can even team up with your
friends and do challenges and even battle virtual beasts and you do all
this by getting your to-do list done it's really fun because I already have
all these other tools for more of my business stuff I actually use a bit of
gut for more personal habits that I want to develop like remembering to get up
and walk around and do laundry and stuff like that but I also know people who
love to use it for their business stuff too so if just making a to-do list and
checking things off it doesn't do it for you and you need a little bit more of a
fun incentive I would we check out haveta my next tip is to
actually do working from home with other people sort of like you have co-workers
and again you might have this if you are working for somebody else already but if
you don't I would HIGHLY encourage you to find some accountability buddies some
people who are doing similar things to you that you can network with that you
can sort of check in with on a daily or weekly basis and share your goals and
sort of have that accountability with other people because I've been doing
that a lot in the last couple years and it is so motivating and so helpful a
couple ways that I've been doing this is with critique partners or with my
mastermind groups and if you don't know what a mastermind group is it is awesome
and so helpful and I've linked a video down below with a whole Q&A where me and
my mastermind group answered all of your questions but basically it is a group of
people again who are in the same boat as you going for the same goal and we're
either meeting on a weekly basis to share those goals and check in and
encourage each other and give each other ideas or you can even do daily
productivity sprints with them you can also do these by yourself where you just
set a timer for thirty minutes or 40 minutes and be really focused on a
certain task and then when that timer goes off you stop and you take a break
but I really love doing this again with accountability partners because then you
get to check in with each other and sort of reinvigorate and motivate each other
and then do it again some of my mastermind friends and my critique
partner friends do this through Marco Polo or through Instagram or through
text message and we don't do it all day every day but those days that we are
really wanting to get stuff done and we're already in communication we'll
just say hey do you guys want to sprint for a few hours and do check-ins and
we'll do that and it is so helpful I also run these kinds of productivity
sprints with my patrons over on patreon comm so especially if you're a writer
looking to network with other writers and have that accountability on a daily
basis you can definitely check out my patreon which I'll link right here and
join us for those productivity sprints and all the other resources we have on
there ready to see all these tips in action well that first video in the
work-from-home playlist is actually a two day vlog where I
logged two days of my work from home life one focused more on business one
focus more on writing and I also show a little bit of my morning routine also if
you are a writer and you're not currently able to work as many hours for
your normal job you've even lost your job during this crazy time in our world
right now you might be looking for new ways to make some extra income during
this time if that's the case I'm also including in this playlist my video
where I share three side hustle ideas for writers there are many ways to make
a supplemental income online right now but if you're like me and you're a
writer and you would like to have some way of making --side money that actually
relates to your writing and would eventually support your writing and
future books and writing journey in this video I shared the 3 side hustles that I
personally use to make a psychic income while I'm writing my books if you want
to see that video or any of the other full tutorials I've referenced today
definitely check out that playlist in the description next and if you have any
more questions always feel free to leave a comment below or message me on
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like this one and I can't wait to see you in the next video