3 good practices for working from home

We divide the experience of working from home into the following three main blocks:

1. A dedicated space.
2. Productive method.
3. Not everything is work.

Next we develop point by point.

 

1. A dedicated space

No matter where you live, in a 4-story house with a garden or in a small 45m2 apartment, wherever it is, you should find a dedicated space where you are as comfortable as possible .

Here are some important features:

• Isolated.
• Natural light.
• Work items.

Isolated

Find the space in the house where you are more isolated, that is not for example a point of passage such as the dining room. Just think about the space in the house where you will have the fewest interruptions. This way you will be able to work in a pleasant, calm and effective way.

Natural light

If the secluded space can have natural light and hopefully be near a window or balcony overlooking the open space with a little green, so much the better!

Installing yourself in this scenario, illuminated, with the blue of the sky and the green of the vegetation, will allow your mind work in a balanced and pleasant way.

The harmony of the space favors concentration and helps to make decisions more efficiently.

If, on the other hand, your space does not have natural lighting, incorporate elements that help you to be in contact with nature (warm lighting, indoor plants, etc.)

Work items

Finally, to complement your space inside the house, there is the material that you are going to use.

Our recommendation is:

• be minimalist, don't have anything you won't use
• organize an ergonomic workspace, allowing you to maintain a good posture

Here are some very basic and inexpensive recommendations that we have personally tested, especially for those of us who work with a laptop:

• Ikea Table. Very basic and practical 40€ aprox.
• Ikea Chair. Functional, basic and practical. 59€ aprox.
• Keyboard and mouse logitech.  21€ aprox.
• Laptop stand. 20€ aprox.

 

2. Productive method to work from home

Probably many of you are used to working in an office and when you find yourself in the situation of working from home, certain points appear that generate conflict.

Some of the phrases we hear most often are:

• ""I work more hours; I am not clear when I start or when I finish the day; I'm always half connected, I don't rest, etc."

After years of experience of working remotely, we recommend that you focus on developing a personal method of productivity with which you feel comfortable.

To do so, we recommend taking the course "Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity", by University of California, Irvine

With the course completed, you will have a very complete base to take control of the day to day and walk iteratively towards your goals.

You will avoid that horrible feeling so usual of "buff, the whole day has already passed, I have not stopped working; and I have not started with the important thing yet !! The day has escaped me!!".

So what are the steps to follow?

The first step is to adapt the method to your personal situation and secondly to assess how technology allows us to take it to the next level.

We recommend that you ask yourself the following questions:

• What is my main objective professionally? How many hours do I want to work to achieve it?
• How do I know which tasks are important and critical for today? Important but not urgent? Can you wait?
• What am I really spending my time on? Is it really aligned with my goals? How much time am I spending?

Here are some of the main tools we use on a daily basis, which are simple and practical:

• Billage To measure and know how I spend my time and that of the team.
  • The DigitalMakers team records their hours in an internal management tool, which allows us to bill, manage projects, etc., the tool is Billage.
  • Measuring time, not only allows you to manage the business, but also makes you aware of where you are spending the hours at all times.
  • Billage, offers an interesting "Play" functionality which, as if it were a Spotify, allows you to "play" when starting a task and "stop" when finishing it, really very usable.
  • A fantastic and recommended alternative to Billage, in case you don't need the rest functionalities for me is Toggl.
• Todoist integrated with gmail.
  • Some members of the agency have used todoist as a task manager for years. The key to this long and satisfactory relationship comes from the fact that the largest volume of our tasks originate from the email account, in our case: gmail.

Other interesting tools that can be a relevant part of your day to day are:

• Hubspot. Centralize the entire relationship with your customers.
  • Since they do not know you and find you through your content / ads, through the management of their interest / opportunity, winning the proposals and measuring their degree of satisfaction to become ambassadors of your brand.
• Google Suite. A cloud suite for all your backoffice productivity tools (mail, calendar, document repository, spreadsheets, word processor, video conferencing, etc)

 

3. Not everything is working

We find that often when someone starts working from home, the first thing they miss is socialization. Suddenly, it seems that everything is work. Meeting after meeting, task after task.

And the thing is that when we work in the office, an important factor in our daily lives is socialization: those cafes in the office, the small talk the elevator, the previous in the meetings, the hallway conversations, the coincidence in the bathroom, the business trips etc.

With remote work we lose much of that much-needed socialization.

At DigitalMakers we recommend looking for a balance. In other words, take advantage of the productive points offered by being able to work from home and, at the same time, consciously force breaks and practices that allow us to socialize.

Some recommendations that we suggest:

• After an hour of hard work, take a 5-10 minute break.
• As you record your time, thanks to the tools that we have explained before, be aware of this and do not work more hours than planned.
• Teleworking helps with conciliation. Organize your time and take the opportunity to accompany your children to school, eat as a family and when you finish the day, make sure to socialize with your family and friends (even virtually).
• Incorporate an exercise routine into your day to day. There are no excuses, with the time we avoid commuting to work, we can go to the gym or exercise at home.

Hopefully our tips and recommendations will help you improve your day to day working from home.

What about you? What is your experience working from home? Positive? Negative?

Share your experience with us! :-)

A virtual hug!