07 Mar Structure Your Work from Home Schedule with these 6 Tips
For some, working from home is a dream come true. It has a bit more freedom, less structure, and definitely a more relaxed environment. However, if you’re not careful, working from home can quickly turn into an unorganized disaster of missing work, unfinished responsibilities, and unnecessary overtime. Create a work from home schedule with these six tips and make the most of your situation.
What is a Work from Home Schedule?
Compared to the schedule you might see at the office—including day-to-day tasks you need to complete, meetings you have to attend, and various additional tasks you get throughout the day—a work from home schedule could be more in depth.
While working from home, you might discover that it’s better to block off periods of time throughout your workday to get specific tasks done. If you have a more relaxed schedule, then you can spread these blocks throughout the day. But if you have a specific clock-in and clock-out time, then having detailed blocks of what you will do and when can help you manage your time better.
A work from home schedule could also include other things. From penciling in your lunch to setting aside five minutes to let your dogs outside, this schedule is going to include more things than your expecting. However, compared to a schedule you have in the office, you will have a bit more freedom to structure it to fit your personal needs.
How to Structure Your Work from Home Schedule
Start from the basics and work your way up. If this is your first time working from home, then you need to figure out what works best for you and how you can easily manage your day.
1. Find What Works Best for You
If you’ve stumbled onto this blog, it’s most likely because you’re trying to find a fool-proof way to create your work from home schedule. I have some bad news for you. A work from home schedule isn’t one size fits all. In fact, following a schedule that someone else created for you can be more detrimental than helpful.
Firstly, we all do different things within different time frames.
Imagine for a second that your job is to read lengthy texts. On average, it takes people 30 minutes to read 10,000 words. However, I’m sure you can think of people who take far less or far more time than that to get through the same number of words.
If you create a schedule based on someone who reads 10,000 words in 20 minutes when you take 45 minutes, then your schedule will fall apart before you can get through it.
It’s all trial and error. Reorganize your daily/weekly schedules often to see what helps you keep your efficiency up or what drags you down. Eventually, you will fall into a system that works.
2. Use Planners, Wall Calendars, Desk Calendars, Online Calendars – Monthly, Weekly, Daily
Honestly, you have a lot of options when building your work from home schedule. Between the different kinds of calendars you can buy to the various programs you can utilize on your computer, one of them is bound to work.
How big or small do you need to go?
Depending on the kind of job you have and the type of work you do on a daily basis, you will have different needs for your work from home schedule.
If you have a job that relies on consistency throughout each day—meaning you do the same few tasks every single day—then it is less likely that you need to detail your schedule down to the hour/day. In this case, it might be better for you to only make schedules for any meetings you need to attend and bigger projects to complete.
On the other hand, if your job is constantly changing and you have a lot of little things to get done each day, it could be beneficial to breakdown your day as much as you can. This means detailing what you’ll do each hour and leaving room for adjustments.
3. Pencil in a Morning Routine on Your Work from Home Schedule
We know that we said you shouldn’t follow the schedule others create for you, but this one is important.
Most people who work from home will tell you how crucial it is to maintain a morning routine. We all think it’s amazing to work in your pajamas. And yes, we can verify that it feels pretty nice to roll out of bed and get to work without having to worry about your appearance. What you don’t realize, though, is that those days you don’t keep up with a morning routine can become your least productive days.
Doing a morning routine isn’t necessarily about looking presentable. It’s more about getting into the mindset for work. This all relates to the work-life balance that people keep talking about. If you don’t create a clear line between when you’re in work mode and when you’re in life mode, then things will become unbalanced and your efficiency (as well as your mental health) can suffer.
So, make sure you’re adding a morning routine to your work from home schedule.
4. Daily To-Do Lists: Most important to Least Important
Again, we are going back on our words a little bit. But for good reason!
While your day-to-day schedule might not change drastically, a to-do list can keep you motivated, productive, and on track. It can also help reduce stress and anxiety. Besides, there’s a sense of accomplishment that comes from checking off another box on your to-do list. On a day where you’re having a hard time getting through tasks, this sense of accomplishment will keep you going.
If you add daily to-do lists to your work from home schedule, then you will be able to outline your day easily and understand which tasks are most important to finish first.
5. Add Breaks to Your Work from Home Schedule
Breaks, breaks, breaks. We will say it however many times is needed before it registers. Breaks are vital to a productive workday and a healthy mindset. If you find yourself working for hours on end, jumping from one task to another, then you’re going to burn yourself out.
Even a short, five to ten-minute break sprinkled in every other hour or between tasks is enough to give your mind the time it needs to relax. When working at home, you might feel more tempted to work throughout the day. It doesn’t seem as taxing since you don’t have to travel farther than your desk to work. But it is. You can hit burnout just as easily at home as you can in the office.
Adding breaks to your work from home schedule will help get you through the day.
6. Work-Life Balance – Make Your Work from Home Schedule Strict and Easy to Follow
It should go without saying at this point, but having no set schedule to follow can create a rocky environment. It can cause you to work too much or too little, your tasks take forever to finish, and your days to drag on.
If you create a schedule, make sure you stick to it—even if it’s tempting to check your email every time you get a notification or to reply to any issues that pop up after you’ve signed off for the day. A word of advice, though: those emails and issues will be there tomorrow (or after the weekend). There will always be more emails and more issues. Just because you answer that one email or solve that one issue, it doesn’t mean that’s all it will be.
It will never just be one email or one issue. There will be more to follow. Establish a strict work from home schedule from the beginning, it will be a lot easier to tell yourself no when tempted to respond outside of your set work hours.
Want to Find a Work from Home Job?
If you’re interested in working from home and haven’t been successful with all of your applications, it could be that you need to optimize your resume and LinkedIn to fit for remote work.
At The Jonus Group, we offer many Career Services that can help you. From resume updates to mock interviews, career conversations, and LinkedIn optimizations. You can see all of the services we offer and their prices here.
If you would like to get started, you can schedule a free, 15-minute consultation here.