7 tips for good time management when working from home
Managing your time in telework, not easy. Beautiful, good, cheap. Home is the perfect place to create a flexible, "free", and perfect workspace to take your business forward in its early years. Personally, I have always worked much more efficiently from home than from any office.
Whether you work from home for your business, because the pandemic forces you to or simply because you prefer it, here are 7 simple and easy tips to help you work more efficiently from home!
1. Go to bed early, get up early!
First, it is important to adopt a good sleep hygiene. I get it, we feel like we're running out of time, so we try to catch up by working later and getting up earlier... We don't work efficiently when we're tired and this one catches up with us very quickly.
Sleep is very important, so I advise you to promote a full night of 8 hours. It's very easy when working from home to fall into the black hole of work until 9am, Netflix until 2am and wake up call at 10am. So it's a matter of disciplining yourself a bit and going to bed early and getting up early. To do this, I advise you to go to bed and wake up 30 minutes earlier until you reach your optimal bedtime and waking times.
Soon, you will feel tired sooner than usual and your body will adjust to your new routine on its own. Personally, I find going to bed around 10:30-11 a.m. and waking up between 7 and 8 a.m. In this way, it is easy to optimize your day well to accomplish everything you want to do.
A schedule that suits you
That being said, some people need more or less sleep, I highly recommend testing your sleep needs and adjusting your nighttime schedule based on your findings. A healthy sleep regimen is extremely important in helping you boost your productivity, good mood, creativity and overall has many benefits for your physical and mental health. Don't neglect it!
Can I hear you grumbling on the other side of your screen? 8 hours of sleep? I won't have time to do nothing! YES, you have time. Manage it. If you think you can't do everything you need to be awake from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. you desperately need help with time management. Carefree ! Keep reading.
In summary…
2. Establish a routine that suits us
Okay, now that we've tackled our night routine, let's tackle our daily routine! It is very easy to get distracted when working from home. Whether it's our spouse, our pets, our children or even our electronic devices. The temptations are many. You still have to remember that our home is our office! Also drop the ideas of: "I'm an entrepreneur because I don't like routine!" Why lead such a routine daily life? I want to do what I want! You will accomplish nothing with this way of thinking. Make no mistake, the greatest entrepreneurs in this world follow a rigorous work routine that is well suited to their needs. We are not on vacation and we need to act as follows.
So what would we do if we got up every morning to go to the office? The answer is simple: we get up, we have breakfast, we get dressed and we leave! And the night ? Same thing, we leave work and we no longer think about it (or almost!). You see where I'm coming from. It's about treating work at home the same as any other work outside. Only with a little more flexibility. So get up, get dressed in something else than your old pajamas, have lunch and start working!
The advantage with working from home is that you can start and finish whenever you want. For example, if you are someone who is not a very early riser, no problem! Take a few hours to yourself in the morning and start working later. The important thing is to set a start time, a stop time and stick to it!
As an example
For example, my optimal schedule is to start my work day around 10 a.m. and finish around 4 p.m. The beauty of being an entrepreneur is to be free of your schedule and your time. No, I am not a supersonic robot capable of working 3x faster than the general population.
On the other hand, I have developed effective work methods that allow me to manage my time well and to accomplish as many tasks in 6 hours as we could do in 8 hours. How do you think I start a business, write content on a blog and pursue a master's degree, all at the same time??
When you're building a business, sometimes it's hard to quit. Believe me, I understand. It is very important to talk to each other and sometimes to force yourself to end your day. Even if it didn't go as planned or if you feel like you haven't accomplished everything. When we're done, we're done! We move on and let our day go. This is difficult to do at first, but in the long run we will reap the benefits of managing our time and priorities well by working from home.
In summary…
- Drop the distractions!
- Act like you're going to work in the office. Establish a work routine.
- Build a schedule that suits you and stick to it! The beauty of being an entrepreneur is being in control of your schedule
- No need to work for 8 hours to be effective...
- Stop working when you reach your end time. It is important.
3. Define life priorities
What are your priorities? Have a flexible schedule? Financial freedom? More time with the family? Do you want to be the next Bill Gates? These are very important questions to ask yourself when trying to manage your time well when working from home. What are your priorities? We often have the impression when we are self-employed that our business MUST be our priority. This is true for some, false for others. It is important to clearly define our goals and what we really want to do with our business in order to allocate our time in the right place.
I therefore advise you to make a numerical list of priorities. From 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important and 10 the least important. This work will require some introspection, but will greatly help you to prioritize the activities that are important to you. After you've made your list, analyze whether you're really spending your time on the things you want, or whether you're wasting your time on nonsense because you feel like it's important. Then let go of unimportant tasks and activities. You will see, you will have a lot more time!
With all this new time available to you, it's time to reorganize your schedule! Manage your time for certain tasks according to their order of priority.
In summary…
- Ask yourself the questions: why am I an entrepreneur? What are my priorities really? Is it my family? My work ? My hobbies ?
- Make a numerical list of priorities from 1 to 10.
- Let go of activities that are not important to you.
- Reorganize your time according to your priorities.
4. Agenda
The agenda is a must to manage your time effectively. Once your night and day routine is set and you have your priorities in mind, you NEED a diary to organize everything. First of all, you have to choose a schedule that suits you. There are excellent diaries both paper and digital. You don't know where to start or how to choose an agenda? I went in search of the perfect planners for entrepreneurs: here !
Finding and buying your diary is the easy part. Using it effectively is the real challenge! The important thing is to be rigorous with it. Quickly, it will become your best friend. Sometimes I don't even have a clue what I'm going to do tomorrow since I know everything is on my agenda, I don't waste my energy stressing about having to remember everything. I open my diary, everything is there!
block of time
In order to manage my time well, I prefer to organize myself in advance (each month) and more precisely each week. For example, I will put important dates (corporate or personal events, holidays, bill payments, reminders of a follow-up email I have to send in 2 months, etc.) and recurring events in advance. Then, this gives me the freedom to build my schedule every week or even every day around these time slots that are already "blocked". It is also important to give yourself flexibility. For example, I always like to give myself a little extra time to do a task. It avoids a lot of stress and allows you to accomplish everything by doing quality work.
To manage your time well, you have to follow your blocks of time! Despite the fact that you can keep some flexibility in your schedule, it is important to keep track of the blocks of time you have blocked for a certain activity. That is, if you entered: "Prospecting calls" between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. Make prospecting calls only in this block of time. Otherwise, you will not have time to move on to your other activities.
In short, a well-used diary is an asset, I even advise you to use it for your personal life. You will quickly become an ace in managing your time!
In summary…
- A diary is essential.
- Find a schedule that works for you.
- Include EVERYTHING and include important events, reminders and recurring events.
- Track his blocks of time.
- Use it for both personal and professional life.
5. « To-do lists »
We have our agenda, great! Now, what do we write in it? Yes, the good old "to-do list" or task list is an imperative in managing your time. Especially when working from home! We can often get lost between chores and work. To do this, I advise you first to block personal time as well as work time.
In the same vein, do not combine personal tasks and professional tasks in the same to-do list. You notice that one or the other of the tasks will take over very quickly. When you're working, use your professional list, when you're not working, use your personal list. This way, it's easy to manage your time!
At the beginning of the week, before organizing your calendar, take the time to build to-do lists of what you want to accomplish during the week. Then build your schedule accordingly. Keep some free space towards the end of the week for "rework" of tasks that you may not have completed or that you did not have time to do.
Any other non-urgent task that may arise during the week, add it to your to-do list for the following week. It is pointless and inefficient to branch your schedule towards new tasks, you will not accomplish your goals for the week this way.
Practice, practice, practice
To manage your time effectively, it's important to write down everything you need to do. Even small emails and paperwork. It's often these small tasks that seem benign fall between the cracks and we end up forgetting them and wasting a lot of time... yet this little email to your supplier is perhaps very important to prepare for the launch of a new product this month. next…
Finally, give yourself a chance. One thing at a time. Sometimes we look at our list and feel overwhelmed by the workload. It's okay not to have everything finished at the end of the week, there's always next week! Indeed, it is about prioritizing important tasks and practicing our "let go"!
In summary…
- Make two lists: one personal and one professional
- Make sure you have space in your calendar for the delay
- Don't unnecessarily add new tasks to your week along the way. Start building a list for the following week.
- Write down EVERYTHING even small emails, payments, etc.
- Give yourself a chance!
6. Effective segregation of duties
Again in the prioritization of tasks, yes! I think time is very important and it is imperative to use it efficiently. the Eisenhower matrix is a great tool to help us prioritize our tasks, both personally and professionally. There she is :
About: Think Change
In short, the matrix speaks for itself, I strongly suggest that you use it as a beginner to help you manage your time as you wish. Eventually, the sorting of these tasks will be done all by itself in your head, you just have to practice!
7. Definition of a workspace
Finally, it is very important to clearly define your workspace. Even though I'm the biggest culprit for working all day in my bed (and I love it), don't follow my example! It can be very demotivating to stay in bed all day.
So define a place in your house where you will work. Subconsciously, you will be in a much better frame of mind and you will be cerebrally much more focused on your work when you are stationed there.
This will prevent you from being tempted by distractions. When you are at "your desk", you are working and when you are not there, you are no longer working.
Manage your time
So ! Basically, these are simple, yet extremely effective things to manage your time when working from home. Implement these small changes to your daily life and let me know your results in the comments!