Working from Home: Tips & Tricks

6 min readMar 16, 2020

The Workplace vs the Homeplace

It’s 6.30am. The alarm goes off. I hop out of bed and have a shower. I get dressed, organise my stuff and leave the house by about 7.15am. After a brisk 15 minute walk, I arrive at the train station. The train leaves at 7.45am and takes about 45 minutes to reach the city. Another 10 minute walk (stopping en route for some coffee) brings me to the office.

This is my usual morning commute — over an hour door to door. I get a blast of fresh air and the blood flowing during the walk either side of the train journey. On the train I engage the mind usually with a book or podcast or sometimes with my favourite music. By the time I reach the office and enter the work environment, I am primed and ready for work.

But what’s it like on the occasional days I work from home? I don’t have the need for the same commute and so I find it can take a little longer to switch on and get into work mode. Rolling out of bed (a little later than 6.30am, ahem!) and stumbling a few feet across the hallway to my desk in the next room is not the quite same. I am not primed in the same way so it necessitates a different approach to get fired up for the day ahead.

For some of my colleagues remote working is the norm and, from speaking with some who do so full time, isolation can become a real challenge. I like the idea of working from home more often; Google remote working and you’ll find numerous articles on the benefits (I’ve included links to some at the end). But I’ve only ever worked from home the odd day week to week. To get a real sense of it I recently I’ve trialled working remotely for a two week period while looking into some tips that could help me get the most out of my days.

At the time of writing, Mother Nature has thrown us a hand grenade (COVID-19) and so it is a possibility that more of us may need to bunker down and work from home for a time. Some of us may be more used to this than others, but hopefully these tips might help us get the most out of it.

So what can we do to help us when working from home?

Set a Routine & Structure for the Day

Without the usual commute, coffee breaks, lunch and face to face meeting affordances the workplace environment brings, it can be easy to let the day slip by and dissolve from work to home life with no clear delineation between either. This can lead to decision fatigue, procrastination or burnout. The advice is to prepare by setting a routine and structure for your day. Time blocking your calendar is one way to do this. Have a definitive start and end (e.g. start at 9am, finish at 5pm). Use your calendar to schedule daily tasks, meetings, breaks and other activities throughout the day.

Mock the Commute

Instead of rocking your commute daily you could mock your commute. Get up, get dressed and leave the house. Walk or jog for 10–15 minutes or even just around the block. The fresh air and walk will get the blood flowing and help wake you up. When you walk back in your front door, you’ll be primed and ready for business!

Set up a Dedicated Workspace

Where possible, set up a dedicated space for your laptop / computer. Ideally this should be a desk away from your kitchen or living room as you want to avoid blurring the lines between work and home life. The lure of Netflix or your favourite boxset may be enough to distract you if you work in the living room. A dedicated work space will help get you focus and get in the zone
for work.

Add Some Plants

According to a wired.com article “Plants can add more to an office than a decorative touch — psychologists have found that, as well as oxygenating the air, bringing some flora into the workplace can improve employee satisfaction and can increase productivity by up to 15 per cent”. So if you can, surround yourself with plants! *Note to self, get more plants!

Eat Proper Meals

Fuel the mind with proper meals. When in the office you might normally go out for lunch or have a packed lunch. Do the same at home. Don’t eat that pack of biscuits, no matter how tempting!

Prevent Cabin Fever — Get Out of the House

Get out of the house at least once a day. If you don’t opt for mocking the commute, then get out for some air at lunch time, or in the evening before switching off and into home mode.

Have Headphones at the Ready

If you live with others, or have family around in the same house then it’s a good idea to have a good set of headphones and your favourite tunes at the ready to block out any distraction. I have two sons under the age of 3 who can be quite busy, and vocal, as they go about their day! I find some of the focus playlists on Spotify help me minimise distractions and get into the flow. I’ve seen other services referenced elsewhere such as Focus@Will , Brain.fm or apps such as Noiz.io if you prefer natural sounds to music. Not into listening to music and working? Earplugs could be an alternative option to consider.

Keep in Touch

Working from home can become quite isolating if you don’t connect with someone else on a regular basis. Make sure to keep in touch with your colleagues. When in the office it can be easy to just drop by someone’s desk for a quick catchup. When at home it can be easy to forget. Communication is key for remote distributed teams to be successful and productive. Let your colleagues know what you are working on, update on progress or issues you encounter. Or just check in on a colleague for a chat!

Room to Improve

These are just some things that resonated with me that I continue to
explore the optimum working-from-home routine and I have plenty of room to improve!

We can also use this time to optimise working from home practices and when all these challenging times have passed we will have created new, better ways to work together.

Try them out, or pick what works best for you.
Best of luck & stay safe!