Structure Your Workday With These Routines
The convenience of working at home is also his curse. There are no commutes to give you time to collect your thoughts on the way to work, no lunch with coworkers. To structure your home life, you need to create your own daily routine.
Order lunch, fire up Slack, and schedule an afternoon shower. It’s Work from Home of the Week ! From our sofas and local coffee shops, Lifehacker gives you tips to keep you productive, balanced, and sane, whether you work from home all day or your entire career.
Start the day right
Your morning routine serves two purposes: signaling to your brain that it’s time to work, not messing around, and giving you time to collect your thoughts before diving into your daily routines. There are several ways to accomplish one or both of them:
- Get dressed . Look, you don’t have to , but that’s an option.
- Think about it. Take time to meditate in the morning, or write the morning pages , or add an entry to your gratitude journal .
- Find your way to work . Walk around the block and return to the front door.
- Run the assignment . Every morning I take my children to kindergarten. You can also use this time to shop at the store, have coffee, or even work in the yard.
- Or just run . Morning is a great time to exercise.
“I take my kid to school every morning and he works wonders by clearing the cobwebs and shaping ideas in my head,” says freelance science writer Leah Shaffer.
Plan a change of scenery
Sitting in the same house all day becomes very boring. If you find it difficult to concentrate, it is not (only) because you are lazy! Distractions at work tend to give you a break, but also allow you to focus more or less on your work. Consider talking to a colleague. But distractions at home tend to boil down to either a waste of time or still feel like work — for example, chatting with a colleague by typing in Slack. It’s hardly a break when the rest of your work will be typing into, say, a spreadsheet. Try the midday scenery change instead:
- Take a run . You may have missed it this morning, but now is a good time too! Or just do some push-ups on the living room floor.
- Check your mail. They brought things from the person at home! And you have to leave the house, or at least the room, to find out what they are. (Thanks to Megan Johnson on Twitter for reminding me of this joy.) For freelancers, this is an extra sensation because sometimes these things involve checks.
- Get dressed if you haven’t already. Or finally, take a shower, which will feel like a luxury mini spa, as it is more of a break than a chore. Rachel Feltman of Popular Science says: “I currently work in the office, but after 1.5 years of working remotely, I used to take a ‘shower break’ after my first article of the day. I tried terribly to force myself to get dressed first, but using that as a break meant I always got out of my bathrobe. ”
- Go to a cafe . Or, if you’ve been to a café, try changing cafes! Or even home. Which brings us to …
- Take a real lunch break . Like, not at your table . Sure, it’s cheap and convenient to just grab something from the fridge, but you can at least eat it in the kitchen, not in the office. Better yet, have a mini picnic outside. Wudang Yang, a freelance journalist based in Seattle, says, “I will take the time to cook my own dinner. Makes me take a break from staring at the screen all the time. “
Stop working
The end of the working day can dissolve into the evening, and then before bedtime. If you really do work best in the evenings, you can structure your day that way, but do it on purpose , not the default, because you forgot to set boundaries.
Here are some procedures to help you stop working:
- Take an evening commute to work or take advantage of one of the morning replacements we mentioned.
- Schedule a meeting with family or friends . I know that my children will be waiting for me. Partners, roommates, or friends can also play this role.
- Plan something right after work , whether it’s a social event or meeting yourself for a favorite exercise or hobby.
My office is upstairs from the rest of the house, so when my husband comes home with the kids, I know my working hours are running out. I finish what I do and plan for the next day. If this is one of those rare occasions when I need to work in the evening, I plan it too, perhaps setting aside an hour after the kids go to bed.
Just because you work and live in the same place doesn’t mean that your job should be your life, or that the two should mix unhealthily. If this all sounds too complicated for your free self, try choosing one and see how much it changes.