Working from home is challenging if you’re not used to it. How do you work from home and get things done? That’s what we’ll focus on in this tutorial.
What we’re going to discuss:
This tutorial is written specially for:
Ready? Let’s go.
I’ve worked from home since 2009, when I started out as a freelance software developer. Many a website, app and project were built from living room/kitchen tables!
I’ve also worked from coffee places, airports, co-working spaces, outdoor cabins, trains, hotel lounges, and so on. Since mid-2019 I’ve got an actual home office, but I still tend to roam around the house…
The key to working productively from home is finding out what works for you, based on the values and goals you set for yourself.
I know I get restless if I work longer periods from one place, so that’s why I switch spots often. I also figured out that I work best if I focus on one task for 3-5 hours at a time, so I organize my day around those time periods (see deep work below).
It may also help you to discover and observe what kinds of rules you’ve set in place for yourself. Presumably helpful rules like “I need to work 8 hours a day” may cause you to be less productive, because you might stress out all day about needing to put enough hours in.
What follows in this tutorial are my own experiences with working from home. Your mileage may vary. What I want to do, is give you some pointers to think about, and figure it out on your own from there.
I always get annoyed with people, experts and my mom that tell me:
I’m about to give you the same advice that I despise so much: it helps to structure your day. It’s your day though, so it’s perfectly fine to structure it however you like. Starting work at a different time every day is a kind of constant, too.
Here’s what I recommend:
It’s important to emphasize that working from home doesn’t need to be the same as working from an office. We’re working from offices because it’s easier to communicate in sync with co-workers. Working from home is naturally async, which means you can benefit from not needing to be in sync with others.
A few examples:
Right now I can hear you say: “Yes, but you’re a freelancer/entrepreneur! You can do whatever you want. You don’t have mandatory meetings.” Well… I’ve got some bad news for you! Most meetings could have been an email. If it’s mandatory, someone f-ed up somewhere. Your boss doesn’t trust you to think for yourself. (A rule of thumb: Never attend a meeting without a pre-set agenda.)
I also have different values and goals, compared to yourself. Perhaps you enjoy meetings, being in sync, chatting around the watercooler. I don’t, so I’ve organized my work and productivity around those values/goals. You don’t have to have the same values/goals. But I do recommend you figure out what you value, and organize your life/work around that.
I wrote this tutorial right in the middle of the corona/COVID-19 virus epidemic. Most countries are on lockdown or close to it. It’s surprising how many people are able to work from home, even though their bosses/companies said they couldn’t when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Necessity is the mother of invention!
A common question I hear about working from home, is this: “How do you NOT get distracted? I’d be playing on my Xbox all day, or do chores.”
It’s easy to get distracted by pleasant activities, such as reading a book or gaming or watching Netflix. It’s also easy to procrastinate by doing chores like laundry, the dishes, or fix that lightbulb you’ve been meaning to replace. In fact, I know plenty of people who spend their free day off doing chores, instead of what they want to do…
I want to share a few approaches to this problem.
First, let’s talk about distractions. I recommend a principle called Deep Work. First coined by Cal Newport, in his book by the same name, deep work essentially means working undistracted on meaningful work for longer periods of time.
A good example of deep work is a writer’s retreat. Imagine you’re writing a book. You get a cabin in the woods, isolate yourself for 3 months, and finish writing your book. That’s deep work.
You can do this at home too. Designate a period of 1-5 hours to a given task with a clear end result, and spend that time working on your task. Close your “office” door, or put on some noice-cancelling headphones, and jam to your favorite tunes. Take a break when you’re done (or every hour).
A few other, similar approaches exist. I use an app called RescueTime, which has a Focus Time mode. It’ll block distracting websites, but it’s also a simple timer that helps you “declare” a block of time as focus-only. The Pomodoro technique works the same way.
Managing distractions is the same as being disciplined and purposeful about the work you want to do. Paradoxically, discipline equals deliberate choice. This ties into procrastination, which we’ll discuss next.
Procrastination comes from the inability or difficulty to manage your emotions†. You put off important work because it makes you uncomfortable. Procrastination has little to do with willpower. I’ve never put off playing videogames, but I do avoid writing a blog post on a tough topic.
I do the laundry to avoid work, and I know it, but I lie to myself thinking I’m replacing seemingly urgent (laundry) tasks with important ones (writing). Why can I muster the self-discipline to play games for 5 hours, while avoiding a more important task? Because the videogame doesn’t make me uncomfortable, and it doesn’t put up a barrier I have to jump over to begin working.
Beating procrastination, and distractions by extension, comes down to:
†: Why procrastination is about managing emotions, not time
You can find a few great videos about values, and value-based work (and life), on Russ Harris’ YouTube channel.
In 2013 I traveled to Thailand. My flight had a layover connection at Hong Kong airport, which was too short to get out of the airport but too long to hang around Starbucks doing nothing. So, I did what I always do: I flip open my MacBook, and got to work.
Over the years I cultivated the ability to work anywhere. Better said, I cultivated the ability to get to work anywhere. For me, doing work actually consists of starting to work, and then keeping working. I don’t think of work as a task with a set beginning and end – I merely think about starting, and not stopping for a while. This makes working much clearer, less daunting, and easier to keep doing. It’s a shift in mindset.
Do I procrastinate? Hell yeah! Do I get distracted? Hell yeah! Does this work only for me (as far as I know)? Hell yeah! But it might work for you too. Maybe you can figure out a way for yourself to get value-focused, instead of needing to put in those 8 hours a day.
Let me put it differently. I’ve identified 2 types of workdays:
A key insight here is to recognize one day for the other, and differentiate between the two. You feel good about a workday that yielded results, even though you feel you did “nothing”. You feel bad about a day in which you wanted to code a lot, and got a few lines done because of distractions.
What’s important is to become results-focused, but not too much. When you recognize what matters, based on your values, you can let go of the “Need to always code a lot” approach.
You learn to recognize a work day for what it is: a drop in an ocean of productivity. A great yield comes in the long term; you lose a few battles but win the war.
In the end, it’s more meaningful to steer a ship where you want it to go, than to fuss about whether or not the wind picks up. In my experience, when you just start working, productivity inevitably kicks in, if you learn to cultivate and practice it.
See!? I set out to write an article about working from home, and suddenly I’m almost 2.000 words in – and ready to write a concluding paragraph to wrap it all up. That’s how work works.
Here are some of the core principles we discussed:
Want to learn more? Check out these resources:
