Efficient Working

Efficient Working

 

The biggest challenge of running a business from home is being efficient with your time. While you may not experience the same distractions as you would in a regular office, the distractions you have at home are more likely to interfere with your focus and divert your attention away from the job in hand.

Today, I will be sharing my top five strategies to enable efficient working from home.

 

Workspace

First thing is first. Let’s start with your work space.

Create a separate space that is dedicated to ‘work’, whether that is the spare room or an area in your kitchen. Ensure your work space is somewhere where you always work. Try to stay away from working in places that you deem as relaxation zones such as your living room or the bedroom. Keeping your work space separate from your homelife will give you balance and allow you to be more focused. If you don’t have an area of your house that you can dedicate to this, why not set up a space that you can pack up at the end of each day.

 

 

Discover your golden hour. There is a point in your day when you hit your productive peak. Scientists say it’s 11am but others disagree. Mine is at 6am, when my house is still asleep. Getting up at 6am isn’t for everyone. So when is yours?

A good way to find this out is to log your hours across the week to find out when your most productive. Once you have established this time, switch off your emails, turn off your phone notifications, close the door to the world and work.

 

Learn to say no

As a small business saying no isn’t the easiest especially when you are starting out. I would always recommend breaking down your short, medium and long term missions and setting a time goal. Focusing your objectives, will allow you to say no to anything additional. Diverting your attention to other tasks or jobs can spread you too thinly and can stop you from achieving your ultimate goal.

 

 

Block schedule

A great strategy to working efficiently is block scheduling. Allocating a task to a time block, will help you to streamline your time and enable you to be focused on the job in hand. For effective scheduling, block out between 90-120 minutes at one time.

 

I find this allows me to get focused, become less distracted and get the job done. It also helps me to have regular breaks which is important for your mind.

Always ensure email and social media notifications are switched on during your working time block.

 

The art of distraction.  Running your business from home can be lonely. Any contact from the outside world can be a welcomed distraction. I have wasted days connecting with friends on social media because I’ve needed contact with another adult. In order to gain balance, why not break your day up with a coffee with a school Mum or spend your break listening to your favourite music. Or why not hot desk with another business who is also working from home. You may find you are more productive. Another way to combat this feeling is to spending one day per week working in a café.

 

The ALL by MAMA Network hosts a monthly accountability call, which is great if you are working alone. If you want to join sign up as a VIP and drop a message. The next call is 4^th December at 8pm

 

by Donna Jackson 

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