Tips for Telecommuting Efficiently (1)

Having office at home requires adaptation time. You need to rethink many of the things that are taken for granted about work and reorganize those processes that are internalized after so many years of going to work to an office. 

At first, it may overwhelm you a little, even you may feel lost. But we are going to give you some guidelines so that tasks keep going forward and you can take advantage of the multiple advantages of teleworking. 

This is key to your mental health and productivity at work. Staying home for a time is not the same as facing a new type of work. If it is a temporary situation, anything, any corner and any time is worth a bit. 

Of course, when you are going to make working remotely your way of earning a living you will need to really organize yourself: find the perfect place, set your schedules, respect your rest ... It really is to implement a new methodology. 

Obviously, if you have a room to spare that you can call an office you will be privileged, but even in the case of not being this way (as it happens to many people) you need a comfortable space to work. 

Find the quietest place at home and- this is very important-, airy and with natural light to avoid the “cave effect” that take many people their toll on the first weeks. 

Prepare a desk where you can have everything you need to work on, which is usually a computer, a reading lamp and a notebook. 

It would be very interesting if, as far as possible, it was an exclusive space for work that favors changing the professional mental state to the staff and, also, it does not make you walk like a nomad picking up everything and changing rooms. 

Working on the laptop on your knees while sitting down on the sofa will not only generate almost instantaneous back pain: it will also influence the way you take work, running the risk of ending that "informality" impacting on it. 

Postscript: Invest in a good chair and you will save money on physical therapists later. 

This matter is somewhat controversial, because everyone who works at home has gone through some chaotic phase. There are even some who do not completely overcome it and continue their whole lives embraced by mess. 

If you have ever been surprised saying that of "I organize myself within this mess" you know that deep inside it is not true. A desk full of messy stacked papers, drawers with everything tucked in as is, cups of coffee that have been there longer than varnish, 35 pens of which only one works… Does it seem familiar to you? Of course. 

Clutter is one of the deadliest supervillains for efficiency. Many of the productivity killers have to do with lack of organization, and make you waste a lot of time looking for things you should have located. 

As a fundamental rule, I would repeat that you have on your desk only what you are going to need at all times. 

The rest of things, especially papers, organize them in folders on a shelf. The documents you need often can be placed in those stackable trays that take up little space on the desk and allow you to have them separated, categorized and accessible. 

Organizing the desktop would be extended to the virtual one, that is, to your computer. It is true that you will not leave cups of coffee there, but if something tends to chaos it is a computer. Here it is also important that you compartmentalize the space and have your personal and professional documents organized separately. 

A good folder structure makes you fly and find things the first time. If, in order to look for an invoice, you have to see kitty memes first, a recipe to make whole wheat bread, 12 budgets, a balance, look it up in the mail ... you are losing productive time at the same time that you despair. 

Routines are important to control our workday. They help us a lot to stay focused when it needs to be, but also to clear our head of work in those moments that belong to our personal space. 

In an office, you have an entrance time and an exit time, there are also weekends and holidays when (as a general rule) you do not work. What you do at home is teleworking but it is also working, it is nothing else; so it must be run by the same rules.

It is true that you can get up later thanks to the fact that you save the trip, but that does not mean that you sit at the computer at 11 in the morning, because the work has to be done. That would make you finish very late. 

You will enter a vicious circle that will make you stay up late more and more, and get up early less and less. 

You can also fall into another very common problem, especially found among entrepreneurs, which is stop sleeping. You are missing hours, so you get up very early and end up very late. This involves entering a full time that, basically, will end up crushing your biorhythms. 

You have to start and finish at the same time (more or less). The stricter you are with this, the less it will cost you to telework. It is important that you have time to take care of yourself, to be with your family and to do the things that really motivate you personally. Only then will you be really productive and happy, which is what it is all about. 

Do not be confused by the fact that you are working from home. During work hours you are working - not doing the laundry, talking with the insurance guy who comes to fix the shower, setting up your child's computer or going to buy tomatoes. 

Many times, it is easier to assume it yourself than your partner or the people you share your domestic life with. Therefore, we must evangelize a little but without losing patience. 

You have to make them understand that, just as you do not leave an office in the middle of the morning to go to the supermarket, neither can you usually do it while teleworking; that deadlines and obligations are the same as in a face-to-face job.