Hey everyone.
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this entrepreneur's guide to productivity, you're going to be learning three actual techniques
and strategies for working from home successfully.
These come directly out of my experience, working from home from the past five years
on my own business, as well as actually working as a freelancer and contractor for companies.
So links in the description to some other helpful productivity, videos, and organization
videos to help make sure you get the most out of your time.
So let's go ahead jumped right in.
Number one, is building a bunker.
Now, one of the most common things you might come across when you're looking for, how do
you work from home successfully?
How do you be more effective?
Working from home is creating some sort of place in your house or your apartment where
you just do work.
Now it doesn't actually have to be a room in and of itself.
I get it.
We're all on different budgets.
I've personally never actually had a specific room that's only been my home office.
It's always been in a corner like this in our studio, because right now I'm a digital
nomad.
And even when we weren't bouncing around Air b and bs, my office would always be a corner
of the living room.
So there's three really important points with whatever you do.
And however much space you give yourself.
The first point is when you're creating your bunker, your bunker time needs to be treated
as if you're not actually in the house, which means you're only going to do work when you're
in that space.
When you're in that area.
Now the second big key to success here with creating your bunker and creating your home
office, however big or small, or there's just a little corner is, is making sure that you
only do you work when you're there.
So you want to treat that as if you're actually leaving the house.
What's really important.
We'll get more into this in the second tactic and strategy here is that you treat this area
as if you had physically left the house, which leads me into number three.
And that is you need to set up rules with everyone else in your house.
That when you're in your bunker, you're not to be disturbed.
Now, arguably, this is going to be the hardest part and outside the usual distractions of
social media, Facebook, and email that you shouldn't be checking every five minutes anyway,
it's going to be the people around you, because it's very hard to tell your wife, your spouse,
your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your roommates, that even though they could see you, they
need to just act as if you're not actually there.
Now a little rule that we have in our house is I just tell my wife that I'm plugging in.
So I'll put in headphones, even if I'm not listening to anything.
And that way she knows that even though she could physically see me across the room, just
treat it like I'm not there.
And then at the end of the day, she knows I'm going to stop being antisocial hermit.
Now I know that's a little extreme, but that is the three big takeaways from having a bunker,
making sure that it's an area that you're not going to be distracted and you need to
make sure that you only do work there.
So your brain associates, that specific area of your house with work, it's going to allow
you to relax in the rest of your house or apartment.
And of course, number three, most important that everybody else treats it as a bunker
and make sure and treats it as if you are not there.
Now, the second big key to success or tactic strategy here from working from home is actually
tracking your time.
I know this is the last thing you want to do, because working from home is often equated
to working in your pajamas and having free time and being able to work whenever you want.
Well, time works differently when you work from home, because when you're in office,
you get to punch in and you get to punch out.
Which means if you have a 20-minute conversation with a coworker or you're called into a last
minute meeting, all of that time is something that you don't really have to think about,
because most of our bosses, when we're at an office, just care that we're actually there.
They're not looking at how many hours we're actually spending doing what we're supposed
to be doing.
Although I digress on that point.
So when you're working from home, you're going to find that even though you sit at your desk
for eight or nine hours, the same eight or nine hours, you might've spent at an office,
you're going to find that your output is going to be a whole lot less.
And it's going to be very frustrating and very confusing in the beginnings.
And so what you want to do is you can use an app like rescue time.
You don't have to be OCD like myself.
I personally use a technique called time blocking, and I use a spreadsheet to track every 10
to 15 minutes of what I'm working on.
I'll link up in the description to a video and playlist on time blocking and how that
works.
But you can use a free app called rescue time and it will actually automatically track the
applications.
It is a bit big brotherish, but it will track everything for you, that you're doing on your
computer.
It can also work on your phone.
So you know where your time is going, because when you're working from home, especially
if you're working as a freelancer, you're probably on the clock.
And so it's really important that you meticulously track your time, so that you can have an actual
report at the end of the week and see how you can improve and where things aren't slipping
away.
Because that quick little trip to do some dishes or quickly get some laundry done.
Those little breaks really add up fast, which leads me into the last part of this, before
we go on to strategy, number three here, and that is the five-hour rule.
So something that you have an advantage of as someone working from home is you can do
chores and errands during the day.
Which is awesome.
You should definitely take advantage of that, but often it can come at the expense of actually
being productive and getting your work done.
So I follow something called the simple five-hour rule, and that is I don't do chores around
the house and I don't run errands until I've at least done five hours of solid work.
So me personally, I like waking up early in the morning, I'll get those five hours done.
And then in the early afternoons, I'll go do grocery shopping.
I'll go run errands.
And then that way I can take advantage of the fact that I can go to all those places
when everyone else is still at work.
Sometimes I used to even go to the gym in the middle of the day, because that was when
I could actually find a place to swim, because I really liked swimming laps.
And if you go at the end of the day, if you're a fellow swimmer, you know, that there's never
any free lanes, everyone, all the lanes are taken.
So you can do things like that.
But following the five-hour rule, we'll make sure that you at least get five solid hours
of work done before you start taking advantage of that flexibility that you have.
Now, the third and final strategy and tactic I have here for you is a definite end time
to your day.
This is arguably one of the hardest parts of working from home, because it's so easy
for your work to just blend in, do everything else that's going on around your house.
Especially if you are checking on laundry or you're doing house chores throughout the
entire day, you'll get to the end of the day and you realize, Oh, I only worked five or
six hours.
And I didn't expect to spend an hour cleaning this one thing, but it was just so dirty.
I had to clean it.
And it turns out to be a way that you were procrastinating, whatever the thing may be,
you want to make sure that you create a definite end time to your day.
And when you create this end time, it allows your brain to turn off and relax.
And this also ties into the first strategy, which is making sure that you only work inside
your bunker.
So don't pick up your laptop and then go to your bed to work or pick up your laptop and
type away while someone else is cooking or you're watching TV.
You really have to make sure that you keep all of your work inside your bunker.
And you have a definite end time.
This end time is also going to help you with the third part of the first strategy, which
is getting other people to treat you as if you're not there.
Because one of the things that was really helpful for me, was communicating to everybody
else, Hey, okay, I might be in the corner, but when I'm done, I'm done.
You can talk to me.
We can be normal people.
You just have to treat me like an antisocial permit until I'm done with my work day.
And it's going to be a lot easier to get those other people in your life, to buy into the
fact that you are taking, you're working from home seriously, if you actually end your day.
So it's beneficial for you in terms of making sure that you can relax and recharge.
You're not spending two or three hours right before bed working, and it's beneficial to
everyone else in your life, because they get to actually enjoy your company.
And they'll have a lot more respect when you are alienating them.
The rest of your Workday.
Now a final tip I have for you here with strategy number three, is creating some sort of end
day routine.
So whether that's looking through your emails, whether that's planning out your next day,
whether that's listening to a specific song, I know that's a little weird, but I like to
do that to mentally trigger the days’ end or going for a run or workout something where
you create a clear separation where your brain knows as soon as this task starts happening.
As soon as I hear the song, or we start walking away from this, or we start doing that, that
the day is over and you have to respect and honor that.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely held one of these three tactics and strategies will be helpful to you and
be more successful working from home.
If you'd like to learn more about some of the strategies, I'll link up to a longer video,
where I take a deeper dive into how I actually structure my days through time blocking and
the different ways I handle communication so I can get a lot more work done.
So go ahead and hit that like button, subscribe for more productivity videos for entrepreneurs,
just like this one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.