12 Ways To Plan Your Daily Routine As A Work From Home Worker
Planning your daily routine may seem like an easy task because you only have to repeat your regular schedule when you worked from the traditional office. The daunting challenge is that with a new terrain that requires working from home, there are expectations not peculiar to working from a traditional office.
It becomes exigent that to surmount this possible challenge, you would have to design and plan a new routine that befits your new mode of working; a custom-fitting approach to work that is customized to fit your new work-from-home schedule.
Here are some useful tips on how to plan your daily routine as a work-from-home worker:
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Maintain Your Office Routine
One of the ways to plan a very practicable daily routine, is to maintain your office routine. This means you must treat your work-from-home experience as you would if you were to walk into your traditional office. Give your home office the look that your traditional office has.
2. Always Dress For Work
One of your most important routines is to wake up and tidy up yourself as you would if you were not working from home. This would not only prepare your mind for the day’s work but also help you in cases where you have to make emergency video calls with your subordinates, colleagues, and superiors or with clients and prospective clients. An official disposition would sell a good impression of you and also get you attuned to work effectively while working from home.
3. Plan Your Day A Night Before Work
Your routine for the next day of work should be envisaged and planned your day. Oftentimes, while rounding off for the day, you could quickly seize that opportunity to evaluate what you have done for the day and the targets you were unable to accomplish.
By evaluating yourself for the day, it makes you plan on tasks you should first attend to for the next day and how to improve on your deadlines.
4. Use A Task List
A task list can help you improve on your routine accomplishment.
Task Schedule would guide and navigate how you work; by ensuring you pay more attention to relevant tasks and listing them in the order of importance.
With a task list, you can achieve more with the limited time frame that you have.
5. Get Specific: Don’t Design Your Task in Your Mind
Don’t be tempted to itemize your routine in your mind; you will end up forgetting many tasks that you need to accomplish. Also, it isn’t ethical of you to treat office works like that, hence the need to ensure that these tasks are written down in your daily diary.
6. Always Do An Achievement Check-List
At the close of work for each day, reviewing and evaluating your tasks for the day is another way to plan better for the following day. Reflect on the tasks you were able to achieve and how you accomplished them. These methods can be adopted for other unaccomplished tasks as you plan for the following day.
Your achievement list would also go a long way in boosting your morale that you were productive for the day thereby exciting you to do more the following day.
7. Avoid Going Online Too Often
One of the ways to dampen your effectiveness is to become engrossed with the internet. With the many distractions on the internet, you may be tempted to waste your time surfing the internet without being productive.
As a rule of thumb, you must avoid using the internet except for official purposes or when you are rounding off for the day.
8. Have Breakfast and Lunch (If You Can)
Hunger can be a distraction and may affect your effectiveness even while you work from home. This is why it is expedient that you condition your mind to always do breakfast so that hunger will not be a form of distraction for you and in the end making you unproductive for the day.
Yes, if your lunch can be made available while working, avail yourself of that luxury. Good food will also make you effective and yes; it should be part of your routine.
9. Listen To Music
Music most times would help you unwind and relieve you of stress. It thus becomes expedient that you maximize the opportunity to listen to music to aid your effectiveness. However, it mustn’t be too loud so that your family members will not assume you have a lot of free time.
10. Resume at a Scheduled Time and Close at a Scheduled Time
One of the ways to effect efficiency while you work from home is to ensure that all your activities are scheduled in a time frame. You must have a resumption time and a closing time, the same way you worked before the introduction of the work-from-home policy.
This would help you commit to your schedule and plan your schedule in such a way that you are always productive. With this, you can evaluate your achievement at the close of work.
11. Do Your Chores A Night Before
Ensure that most chores that would distract you or affect your effectiveness once you resume work must be attended to a night before or before you resume for work for the day. Do not mix your house chores with office work as this may affect your delivery and your ability to meet up with your daily routine and deadlines.
12. Rest Once You Close From Work
Since you will be resuming other domestic chores when you close from work for the day, ensure you complete those tasks early so you can retire early to bed to rest for the day and be invigorated for the tasks ahead.