How to work from home efficiently ?

That’s it, after months of negotiations with your employer, you’ve finally been allowed to work once a week from home. So, for one day during the week, you won’t need to take the subway to get to work, squashed between passengers, some of whom don’t know anything about taking a shower. A day during which you can walk around in your pajamas if you want to, wear a shirt on top of it, for videoconferences. You often heard that working from home, allows you to be more efficient, more relaxed and more motivated…Yes, but this is all in theory because in reality, working efficiently from home isn’t something you can improvise. You’ll need to respect a few rules to be productive at home, otherwise your employer might rethink his decision about letting you work from home, once a week. Let’s look at these rules, you should respect together. 

Don’t forget to wake up

Now that you don’t need to spend an hour in transportation during the morning, you thought you could use this extra hour for sleeping. A commendable intention but you also thought that setting an alarm would be optional as “your biological clock should work in its own”. Tough luck, your biological clock played up and you’re in a panic, when you look at the time on your phone: 11:15 am already and 4 missed calls from your boss. Even when you work from home, you need to set an alarm and if possible, at the same time as any other day, during the week. Use this hour to go for a walk outside, do your abs or prepare a delicious breakfast, compared to your usual peanut butter and jelly. 

Send your kids to their grandparents’

You told yourself that this working day from home will also give you a chance to spend more time with your children. Moreover, it’s a Wednesday and the children don’t have school. Let us be straight about it: a very bad idea. The brats will always come in your way and won’t stop interrupting your work. Fights between brothers and sisters, diapers to change and all kinds of tantrums, it’ll be impossible to work properly. Send your children to their grandparents’, a caretaker or leave them outside, even if they indulge in white-collar crime. What’s important is that they leave you in peace. 

Disconnect your Netflix subscription

Netflix is the devil incarnate. Last night, you didn’t get the time to finish your episode, and here you are suddenly curious about finding out what happens next. After all, it lasts only 30 minutes, writing your report can wait. But the episode is over and it finished on an exciting note, so you watch the next one. You ended up spending 2h44 minutes in front of Netflix and your report writing is seriously late. To avoid such kind of hassles, it’s best to disconnect your Netflix subscription. 

Don’t discover a sudden passion for cleaning

Everyone likes to live in a clean environment. Usually, you don’t have the time to clean as you would like to. Now that you work from home, here you are busy with your cleaning urge: the bathroom needs to be spotless. While you’re at it, you also clean the kitchen. The bedrooms. Stop, it’s a bad idea, unless you’re thinking about opening a cleaning company, stop immediately and get to work. 

Don’t answer telephone calls from friends

Your friends seem to have doubts on you’re actually capable of working from home. According to them, you have a day off. So, Jeannine who is on maternity leave, doesn’t mind calling you and talking about her kid’s adventures, but you don’t care at all, especially since you find the kid ugly. Be straight about things right from the beginning, working from home means working and at work, one doesn’t call their friends. Don’t hesitate blocking the numbers of your friends, so that you don’t take any risks. 

Don’t work on the couch

Your couch is very comfortable. So, you decided to work while sitting on it. So comfortable, that you’re extremely relaxed. Your eyes are slowly closing and in no time, you’ve fallen asleep. A rookie mistake but nonetheless very dangerous for someone who is new to this concept. Sell your couch on a sales website, this is the best thing you can do. Implement a genuine working space at home and don’t go out.