One of the most difficult things about running a business from home is establishing a suitable working environment at your house or apartment. Sure, it’s easy enough to set up a desk with everything you need to conduct hour-to-hour operations, but eliminating the comforts and distractions of home is easier said than done.
Different solutions work for different people in this regard, and to a great extent it matters what your natural home environment consists of. Is it a large space with room to spare, or a small apartment? Is it just you, or do you have a family and/or pets to consider? There are plenty of different circumstances out there, but these are some general ways that a lot of people running businesses from home can improve their environments to maximize productivity.
1. Clear The Space Of Personal Distractions
If you’re setting up a home office, you can’t get away with making it 90 percent about work and 10 percent about distractions or personal comforts. This list of tips for home office design probably put it best: just don’t mix your work with your personal life! That means no TVs (unless you need the news for work or something), no gaming consoles, no magazines or books, and possibly even no smartphone while you’re at your desk (you may want to consider using a separate phone for business).
2. Make Your Office Space Nice
That sounds like the most obvious tip in the world, right? But when you think about it, the term “office space” isn’t usually synonymous with a pleasant or well-designed area. We think of home offices usually as being tucked away in rooms no one will notice, rather than built in naturally to the design of a home or done up to look nice and feel comfortable. Yet as these additional tips point out, a lot of what goes into designing a productive home office space has to do with design and comfort. You want it to feel like a natural room and part of your home, with a comfortable furniture layout, a good chair, natural lighting, etc.
3. Design Other Rooms To Have A Calming Effect
When taking breaks, and roaming your house, the interior design can influence the mood you will be in and how productive the rest of your workday will be. Add curtains to windows to block out glaring light, set up candles on side tables to keep an agreeable scent in the air, and display photos of family and friends throughout the rooms. For your kitchen, have it be bright and cheery with a bowl of fruit on the counter, with pretty paintings of the ocean or a garden on the walls. For the dining room, add rustic dining room decor to make the environment warm yet elegant: perfect for special occasions. Place soft throw pillows on the couch in the living room and make sure you frequently dust and vacuum the carpets. A clean and well-decorated home will instill a calmness and help you stay focused on your business tasks.
4. Find An Accountability Partner
A lot of people may instinctively think that chatting with someone else over the course of the work day would count as a distraction, but in some ways you may be more likely to lapse in productivity if you isolate yourself too much. One account of home business productivity specifically recommended that people in a work from home situation seek out accountability partners. Ideally, this would mean a friend or colleague who also works from home, with whom you can chat a few times a day. It’s just a little something to keep you grounded, keep you on pace, and give you a little bit of human contact while you work. If you happen to be running a business involving other employees or partners who also work remotely you may even consider a full group chat or network (consider Slack) that allows you all to interact as if you’re at work together.
5. Let Tech Watch The Kids
Working from home with kids might just be the ultimate challenge in an adult’s life. But if you’ve ever found yourself craning your neck to peek over computer screens and out the window making sure they’re still in the yard or playing the way they’re supposed to, modern technology has offered up an intriguing solution. According to this account of GPS breaking down barriers, companies are now using the Internet of Things to connect sensors in shoes to apps or computer programs for tracking purposes. The idea is to keep an eye on elderly family members, but it works just the same with your little ones and can allow you to relax and focus on work if you happen to have young children at home. Problem solved!
6. Let Tech Watch You
… Or at least hold you accountable. When running a business from home it’s actually surprisingly easy to mix up your priorities or to spend too much time on one task and not enough on another. You may end up working a 12-hour day at your desk but find that you zeroed in on one or two things the whole time and fell behind in other areas. Fortunately, there’s an app for that! Or rather, there are countless apps for that. Programs like Habit List and other scheduling/motivation apps are designed specifically to help you stay on task and organize your production throughout the day. Take advantage of these if you happen to be your own boss working from a home office. They provide a sense of accountability that just isn’t always there otherwise.
