Working from home can seem like a dream come true, and yes, every once in awhile, it’s amazing. However, the majority of us are not blessed with perfect, efficient and productive home offices. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Here are some tips on how to best use your smaller office space.
No matter how small your home office is, there are simple things you can do to increase productivity, efficiency which will, hopefully, lead to financial success. Here at YourOffice, we came up with the following tips on how to optimize your home office:
The first things you need to do is to carve out a familiar and comfortable place to do your work. Working from home doesn’t mean finding the perfect place to fit your laptop (your kitchen table). You’ll be more productive and energetic if you have a familiar spot you use every day. It should be perfectly set up every morning for optimum efficiency. When looking for this area, make sure you find a spot where you won’t be disturbed (away from children, noise, etc.). This will help to avoid small business burnout as well.
Define your workspace and set up office boundaries. It’s imperative that your workspace has enforceable boundaries. How you define enforceable is up to you! Many small business owners can’t dedicate an entire room to their office space but it needs to be an area where other people leave you alone. Your children and your significant other need to clearly see the boundaries of your office. They need to respect your office space.
Your home office needs to be as efficient as possible. This means it has to be work friendly. For example, does sitting on the couch encourage you to work or does it encourage you to watch television? Your home office needs to have very few distractions. It has to be designed for optimum efficiency.
Say goodbye to the world outside of your office. Regular offices are full of distractions, and working from home might seem like a distraction but it’s not. Get the appropriate tools to get you into the “working zone” and forget about everything going on around you. Remember, taking breaks is good for you, and working from home means you have more freedom over when and how you take those breaks. You can take a few minutes here and there to visit YourOffice’s Facebook Page for some tips and tricks on how to run your business.
Talk to the People You Live With: Even though most of these rules say to ignore your family as much as possible, this is definitely not the case. Make sure you set aside time to interact with your children and spouse – this is why you chose to work from home in the first place right? After you finish chatting, remind your family and/or friends that you need to get back to work and stay on track.
Conclusion
Most of us dream of working from home. Don’t believe the hype. It’s easy to get distracted by family, the doorbell, or even the pantry calling your name (can pantries talk? Yes, they can). You’ll have the most success if you think ahead, prepare for distractions, and carve out a comfortable, well-defended place for you to settle in and be productive, and you’ll manage to get things done.
Contact Youroffice for information on flexible office space solutions. We will be happy to help you and we also offer full service virtual offices.
Read the original article on lifehacker by Alan Henry
