Much of what we do in our lives all depends on our environments that we surround ourselves in. So I want to discuss today working from home. Many, many people work from home. Maybe not their full-time career is working from home, but maybe they have a side hobby, a side-gig, something they want to turn into an actual business and then in the evenings they’re working from home. So whatever the case maybe, I want to discuss working from home and creating a good environment in your home that you can stay focused because believe it or not, in our houses we get very distracted. Distracted by the kitchen, distracted by the messy bedroom, distracted by the dogs, distracted because of the children. Whatever the distraction is, we have to find a way to focus and have a good environment when we are trying to work from home because we have to get work done.
I’m gonna share some ideas that I use and that you can incorporate in your life. My first one is that I have a nice work area. I have a place that I go to, that I could sit down and it’s my little zone. I need my zone. I need my where I need to sit down and I need to know that I’m going to accomplish work. I’m doing it right now. I’m at my beautiful table with my computer in front of me, my planner to the left, my keyboard, my mouse, my cup of coffee, my cellphone, all the things that I need in my space right now to get work done. So that’s my top priority, having a space where you can work and you know you can go to and you’ll focus in. Another idea is creating a routine in this environment. My routine in the morning is I’m gonna get up, I’m gonna get my cup of coffee, and I go directly to my space. My space where I can open my computer and I personally start checking emails. I wanna see what I can finish before the rest of the world gets up. And by 8 in the morning I have all my emails completed (I get up at 6:30am) and by 8 o’clock I’m ready to tackle the day. I’ve already got so much work done before 8 that I can definitely add new projects to the day because I took care of the first ones that I needed to. So that is going to be a routine that you want to get yourself in. Maybe that’s your evening routine, when you get home, after dinner, then you climb on to the computer and go to your work station. 
But my point being is that we get so distracted in our households we have to have an opportunity to be able to sit down and get work done. Maybe you’re a crafty individual, maybe you need a room where you can out your items together that you’re gonna sell on Etsy. But you need a place to focus in on. One thing when I’m working from home is I get myself set hours so say I work at 6:30 in the morning, I’m gonna close up shop at 3:30 in the afternoon. I might go back to it in the evening if I need to for an hour or so but it’s nice to have set hours to let the people that you’re dealing with, your customers or clients, know your hours. That then defines when they can get a hold of you and they’re not emailing you at 9 or 10 at night. That maybe a way to train the people that you work with, that they just know your hours are such and that they can get a hold of you during those hours, give or take. When people know you work from home they think you’re available all the time and because you should be home. Well, shocker! That is not the case! And you don’t want that to be the case because you want to have a life outside of your workspace and people need to know that and respect that and they will. It’s just setting the ground rules for you and for them. They understand, they know, they acknowledge, and most of the time they won’t even want to email you in the evenings because they know you’re not even around. That’s the perfect, ideal situation that I could expect. Also, one of the perks of working from home is that you can go get a cup of coffee and it’s maybe a few feet away and that’s awesome! Lunch time, you can just go to your kitchen but when I say working from home you have to create a routine inside your home so you can be focused because there are those distractions. Maybe lunch at your house runs for an hour and a half when you probably should only be taking an hour of lunch in order to get things done throughout the day. Whatever your guidelines are, just stick with them. Know that you’re going to get certain things done in that timeframe and get them done, have a to-do list, may 2 or 3 things that you are going to focus on and get done in that timeframe. A lot of it is zoning in to your comfort zone: Your workspace. You know that when you sit in this are that you are going to get things done and I think that is the key to all of this. Maybe for some of you, email is overwhelming. I hear this a lot when I work with my clients, that email is constantly on, people are constantly emailing you. Maybe you have 4 hours a day when you check email and the rest of the time you’re working in and on your business. These are the kind of things that you need to build out when working from home because you’re in your environment, you’re in your comfort zone. You wanna make sure you don’t get too comfy. It’s good to get comfy, just not TOO comfy in your environment or else people tend to get too comfortable and then not get work done and their work’s going in to the evening when they should be shutting off when their family comes home or whatever the case is. Create a really good space for yourself. That is my ideal routine in the morning and I really try to stick with that throughout the day. Of course things come up, but for a typical day, I like to know what my typical day looks like. When I turn on and when I turn off. And I like the people I’m working with to know that as well. I challenge you to set a routine for the time that you’re working, even when it’s in the evenings when you are working on a side-project for 2 hours. Give yourself your routine and honor it and you’ll be very very happy that you did.
