Emma: [00:00:00] Working from home sounds like a dream, doesn't it? Until you find yourself staring at the laundry pile, wondering if you just should fold one more thing and then suddenly 2 hours goes past and That's time lost. If you've ever struggled to stay motivated and productive without the structure of an office, you are not alone.
Today we're diving into how to make working from home actually work for you. Now if you're anything like me at all, I quite like chores. And so I kind of gamify this and make it a bit of a reward to step out of my office and have a stretch and fold some [00:01:00] clothes or hang some washing up or any of those things.but for right now. What I want to talk about is the challenge of working from home, the mental shift from office to home.
In the office, you feel like you've got a seatbelt on, you've got your structure, you walk in and you're on. At home, you can walk in and walk out again. Uh, sometimes we find that common struggles of women working from home, men working from home as well, but more often women, because I don't know if you noticed, but my partner and other people's partner seems.
To not see the chores or it doesn't bother them. One of the two. So our common struggles and my client's common struggles are. a ton of distractions, a lack of structure, and therefore you need to be much more self motivated to actually getting in and getting it working for you.
I'm going to talk about what works for me and some of my clients and see if you can pick up any of the tips and whether they will work for you as well. [00:02:00] first thing I want to talk about is routines and I set a very clear work schedule of when I'm at work and when I'm not at work.
So I work three days a week. I do school hours, two days a week. I do longer hours. They are regular hours in the diary committed to me. And everyone at my house knows that they are the hours that I do. Does that mean I don't get a request to do this or do that in work hours? Of course it does, but I'll talk about boundaries a little bit later.
But everyone knows that they're my work hours and that if I'm working, I'm in my office and I'm getting stuff done. One of the things when I break this boundary and go sit on the couch and let's say I do some laptop work on the couch, Everyone asks me questions, sometimes it's better off taking yourself away so no one can actually see you.
because as soon as you're there, you're on, right? what I want to talk about is environment matters
creating a dedicated workspace matters. I am very privileged. I have my own office. I have done since I started. [00:03:00] It's one of the requirements for me. I need an office with the door because if I can close the door at the end of the day, it works really well for me and it works really well for my family.
So having a dedicated space, at least a dedicated desk if you can't find the whole room, but a dedicated desk just for you that you can walk away from, pack up, et cetera, et cetera. I also think within your environment of a morning or whenever you start work, I start in the morning, having a routine matters.
So mine is. Flick the lights on, put water in the diffuser, pick an oil for the day, have my cup of tea, light some candles. They're kind of the habit stacks that helped me get started at the beginning of the day and, reminds me that environment matters. The other thing that matters is movement and breaks.
You know, I've got walks, I've got naps. I take structured pauses. People laugh about my naps and my walks, but they really save me a lot. I do a lot online. I do a lot of zoom calls. I do a lot of masterclasses online. And my [00:04:00] calendar is color coded so I can look at the calendar and I can have a look at the colors and I know how much energy I need to bring and depending on that will depend on if I need to go for a walk, go for a stretch, go do some Pilates, have a nap, whatever the thing is, I know I can manage my energy based on the color of my calendar.
If anything, Color Coach Calendar. Amazing. I do not skip lunch. I take a break from everything at lunchtime. Tech, sounds, noise, all the things. I just sit quietly. I've got a little seat out the back. I sit quietly and I eat my lunch and just stare at the clouds. Having, giving my brain that break helps me to re invigorate myself for whatever is going to come next.
I think the other thing is about, there's no accountability when you work at home. You can do whatever you like and no one will know. The problem with that is that you'll know when the revenue doesn't come in, or you'll know when the delivery drops, or you'll know, right? So what we need to do is we need to go, what are the structures and [00:05:00] strategies we can have in place so that we can get stuff done?
For me, it's about time blocking, it's about co working, it's about check in calls with clients and with business buddies, all the things. Firstly, I use the Pomodoro technique. So those of you who know it, Pomodoro, Italian for tomato, 25 minute timer, five minutes to have a break, 25 minutes start again. I also have an app on my phone.
If I feel like the noise of a cafe, I've got an app on my phone that has cafe sounds to it. So if I've got to do some deep thinking, I'll set that for 60 minutes and then I've got the cafe noises in the background and I put my phone on the other side of the room just to get that done. I also time block I do similar style of work in a block of time.
So for me, I'm always creating content or leadership development programs or things for delivery for my clients. And that's probably my deep thinking work. So I would. Set a timer for a couple of hours including some stretch breaks But a couple of [00:06:00] hours and I get all the similar type work done in that two or three hour block That way I'm not switching between emails and tasks and all the different things literally just Focus on delivery.
And that works really well for me. It works really well for your brain. The science says that if you switch tasks too much, you lose something ridiculous, like 23 percent of time just by switching tasks. So time block works really well for me. I move around the house if I need a change of scenery, and often I do need a change of scenery.
So whatever the work is, if it's not Zoom work or podcasting work, I'll do it at the kitchen table, because I like the change of scenery. Or I co work where I can, especially on admin heavy days. If I've got admin, which I don't love doing, I'll take myself off somewhere and do it somewhere else. and I love my local library.
I've got a beautiful library and you can hire a pod and you've got people there. And it's amazing. gone to the old school library days where you have to keep quiet. Actually, there's so much activity happening in a library now. And then I do [00:07:00] regular check ins with my clients, with my people, with my biz buddies, just to feel a little bit less lonely.
Having said that, I'm. on Zoom with a lot of clients a lot of the time during the week. So I don't really feel that lonely piece necessarily. And then one of the things which will probably be helpful for you is we have to avoid that chore trap, that urge to clean, tidy, do household tasks, all the things.
The urge is so real, isn't it? workspace, it's easy to walk away and just close the door. but if you don't and you work at the kitchen table, You see every speck of dust and that can put you into procrastination rather than just getting on and getting it done. One of the tips I have, if you're working in an open space, a couple of my clients work in open spaces, is clearing out, having a clear out and clear on kind of ceremony.
So at the end of the day, if you're working in a space that is used, by others, you know, your cutoff is four o'clock. So you [00:08:00] clear off the table and you get that ready for whatever you need to get that ready for. And then in the morning, if your start time is nine, you pop everything back on the table.
So it's almost like you've got your own ritual of getting ready. Even if you don't have a defined space, I like to set, as I said, set specific work hours and in my work hours. Housework is off limits. Unless I'm rewarding myself because I'm weird like that. And I know getting ahead might be actually a really good thing.
have you noticed that working from home you can get the whole, Hey, can you just quickly pick this up for me? Hey, can you just jump to the post office? Hey, can you do? No, no, I can't. I am working and we have to get better as women in business is saying, actually, I'm working today. So I cannot do that for you.
Pop it on a list, which I'll tell you about in a minute, pop it on a list and we can do it another time. The other thing that distracts us, I had a client and she said that she just had friends that kept. Dropping in for coffee. I've never had that. In eight years of working on my, for [00:09:00] myself, I have always said no to coffees in the middle of the day, because one coffee turns into two hours because they think that you're working from home.
You're actually not doing very much, but I'm running a business from home. And that's what we need to reframe that. I am running a business from home. And if I stop to have a coffee for a couple of hours with a friend, what does that mean from a productivity perspective? Especially a lot of us who are working Just school hours.
So you need to ring every minute you can out of that. But also you need time for yourself. ' cause that's the only time you get to be quiet during the day. So say no to coffees or I have a day, Friday is my day where I'll go and have a coffee with someone. That works well. So when someone rings me or messages me and says, let's have a coffee, I'll say, yep.
And they pick a Friday. And I do that. Once I step into my office, And I'm on housework is off limits. If I go out to make myself a lunch snack, which I normally do, I might unstack a dishwasher or stack a dishwasher then while I'm waiting for something, but that is it. I don't fit chores into my day, which brings [00:10:00] me to my next point, creating a later list for chores.
So they don't creep in into work hours. So I have a list In my notes section in my phone of all the things that need to be done at home so I can work through them when I'm off the clock or delegate them once I'm off the clock. do you know what the other day I was, doing some work at the laptop.
I was sitting on the couch, first mistake. And, My family were all there and I had a load of washing on. It was a Sunday to be fair. It was a Sunday. So I was just getting some stuff done. It was, we were quiet. We were getting homework done, all the things. And the washing machine stopped and I thought to myself, right, my next job is to hang the washing out.
And then I said to Evie, who's. I said, babe, so would you mind just grabbing the washing out of the washing machine, popping it in the washing basket and then hanging it up for me? And I'm like, yes, I've got the delegation down pat and she didn't mind doing it whatsoever. So are we asking for the help when we need it?
That's the last thing. At the end of the day, working from home. is about discipline. It's also about flexibility. That's [00:11:00] why we're doing this, but it's also about finding a rhythm that works for you. These rhythms work for me. They were hard, hard one. And, after eight years, I'm slowly getting into the, rhythm of it.
And we've tried a few different things. We've killed a few things off. We've added a few more things in. My question to you is what strategies do you use to stay motivated and productive when working from home? Let's swap some ideas. Send me a message and send me your best tip. I would love to know.
