12 Advice On Working From Home

When run­ning your own busi­ness, you’re faced with the issue of effi­ciency. You’ll have no one to answer to—except pos­si­bly your beloved clients—and some peo­ple find it much more dif­fi­cult than being employed. The ques­tion of effi­ciency is of course also appar­ent when employed, in almost every indus­try and job.

Even so, by devel­op­ing rou­tine and using the right tools the right way, we can achieve tremen­dous effi­ciency when work­ing from home. Add to the mix the trav­el­ing time and money we save, and it’s appar­ent that work­ing from home can be hugely benefitting.

Hope­fully these few rec­om­men­da­tions will give you a push in the right direc­tion. If you have appli­ca­tions, meth­ods or tricks to share, I’d love to hear about them. Please com­ment or write to @mrnordstrom on Twitter.

1. Min­i­mize meet­ings

   Meet­ings are often both time-consuming and unnec­es­sary. We’re bet­ter of skip­ping them unless we absolutely must get into a room together. When you do have a meet­ing, make sure to have a clear agenda and fol­low it.



   I’m all for per­sonal rela­tion­ships and get­ting to know each other. How­ever, it’s best for effi­ciency to keep meet­ings rel­a­tively short and to the point. While I like the idea of stand­ing meet­ings, not sit­ting down, it’s unfor­tu­nately not pos­si­ble for me due to a med­ical condition.


   Here is a suit­able arti­cle titled “Meet­ings Are Toxic”.

2. Min­i­mize phone calls
 and use email

   This seems to be a con­tro­ver­sial rec­om­men­da­tion. I’m per­son­ally min­i­miz­ing phone calls and replac­ing them with email when­ever pos­si­ble. The com­pelling advan­tage of email is that you can choose when to check, read and reply to them, and you can think your response through before send­ing it, pre­vent­ing any misunderstanding.

   Avoid pop­ups and badges show­ing how many unread emails you have. Instead check your inbox on cer­tain times of the day or feel that you need a break from what you’re doing.



   Some peo­ple pre­fer phone calls over email and that pref­er­ence needs to be respected. I per­son­ally choose to inform peo­ple that I pre­fer email com­mu­ni­ca­tion and work best when avoid­ing the dis­trac­tion of phone calls, and then they can choose for them­selves when to call me. Another rec­om­men­da­tion is com­mu­ni­cat­ing through a project man­age­ment soft­ware such as Base­camp. When used cor­rectly, it will pro­vide a nice and clear flow of infor­ma­tion and the client will (hope­fully) eas­ily under­stand the ben­e­fits of using it.


   Make sure you have voice­mail to cap­ture the calls you’re not tak­ing. Most peo­ple see it as great ser­vice when you do timely call­backs. If you can afford it, it’s even bet­ter to pay for recep­tion­ist ser­vices. I’ve heard that there are good and afford­able out­sourc­ing alter­na­tives for this; search and you shall find.

3. Min­i­mize instant mes­sag­ing

   The same thing goes for instant messaging—try to limit the use of it to when you are very bored or feel really lonely. Though social inter­ac­tion is a good thing, instant mes­sag­ing while work­ing is one of the biggest dis­trac­tions of the mod­ern world. If you use it for work pur­poses, or need to use it for another rea­son, turn off sound noti­fi­ca­tions and bounc­ing dock icons.


   This was appar­ently an issue even five years ago, as this arti­cle on CNET clearly describes. I rec­om­mend read­ing it since it gives you some decent tricks as well as old but still very inter­est­ing statistics.

4. Work in blocks


   Focus on one task at the time and work at least two hours before switch­ing. If it’s real­is­tic, I rec­om­mend work­ing four hours or more on a task. This keeps you focused instead of jump­ing between projects and brings bet­ter results faster.

5. Have a sched­ule

   Work­ing for your­self from home does not mean you won’t ben­e­fit from hav­ing a proper sched­ule. Plan ahead, keep­ing your tasks struc­tured and sched­uled. Dead­lines and other time-critical events belong in iCal or Google Cal­en­dar.

   For every­thing else, I rec­om­mend set­ting up a GTD sys­tem accord­ing to your taste and needs. If you haven’t read the book Get­ting Things Done then you should do it. It’s def­i­nitely one of the best invest­ments of time and money you can make. Even thoughts and ideas should be col­lected into an ‘inbox’ for later pro­cess­ing. The point is to get things out of your mind and into a reli­able sys­tem that you actu­ally use.


   As for Mac appli­ca­tions, the most pop­u­lar ones are Things, The Hit List and the one I’m using, Omni­Fo­cus. On the iPhone, Things and Omni­Fo­cus are avail­able, Google Cal has an iPhone friendly site which can sync with iCal, and my pre­vi­ous employer rec­om­mends Action­Method. There are loads of appli­ca­tions out there and a few I find par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing are Ever­note, TeuxDeux and reQall.

   Remem­ber to track your time care­fully. It may not be fun but it allows you to see where your time has been spent, how much of it you’re spend­ing on a par­tic­u­lar project, and lets you send accu­rate time reports to clients. Use your favorite soft­ware, such as Base­camp or Fresh­books, accom­pa­nied by a con­ve­nient dash­board wid­get and iPhone appli­ca­tion.

6. Avoid slack­ing or over­work­ing

   These two oppo­sites can be seen as related and they’re both equally easy to fall for. Work­ing from home with­out any­one to answer to gives you a lot of free­dom. Your full-time job can eas­ily shrink to become part-time, which may lead to missed dead­lines and angry clients.



   On the other hand, hav­ing your work­place in your house or apart­ment puts it con­ve­niently close. It’s easy to work too much, espe­cially since many peo­ple believe there is no such thing as being over­worked. If you find your­self stressed, depressed or think­ing about mov­ing to a deserted island, take a step back and mind your pace.

   Know your lim­its and find your own pace and work­ing hours; ones you can keep con­stantly while stay­ing happy and healthy. When you feel that you can, increase your pace grad­u­ally. Set­ting your pace is like build­ing a house of cards—if you do too much at once, the whole thing will collapse.

7. Stay healthy


   From now on, your health is the most impor­tant asset you have. If you get sick and unable to work, you will have no income and likely no one to rely on. More­over, it’s impor­tant to stay healthy to reduce stress and lead a happy life.



   Eat, and eat healthy. Drink lots of water and eat fruit. Get your vit­a­mins down. Take a break and breathe some fresh air. Go to the gym reg­u­larly or at least go out­side and move your ass. It’ll give you the energy you need to keep going.


8. Get out

   No, we’re not talk­ing about long roman­tic walks in the park. Work­ing from home is in many ways reward­ing but it will become bor­ing. Get out and work from a café once in a while. It’ll give you a change in scenery that will make you feel nice and fresh. Make sure to have some real homo sapi­ens around you—it’ll pre­vent you from going mental.


9. Get a girl­friend or boyfriend


   There’s noth­ing bet­ter for the qual­ity of your life right now than hav­ing a part­ner. It’s some­thing no money in the world can buy. He or she will give you some­one to think about and some­one to do ‘things’ with out­side of work. You may think it takes up your time and it does—that’s the point. A rela­tion­ship will keep your life balanced.


10. Mind your work­space

    It’s a neces­sity to have a ded­i­cated work­space even at home. In a small room at the cor­ner of my apart­ment is my own space which I call my home stu­dio. It allows me to sep­a­rate work from spare time and shields me from any dis­trac­tions. Like Super­man, you need your fortress of solitude.

    Make sure to dec­o­rate it and make it a pro­duc­tive envi­ron­ment. Plants and flow­ers are impor­tant. This may take while and at first it may seem empty but it’s worth the time and con­sid­er­a­tion it takes. Get a com­fort­able and ergonomic chair. Many peo­ple say the chair is the most impor­tant aspect of your work­place. Con­sider using a pen tablet or track­ball instead of a mouse to spare your wrists, and keep your desk free from clut­ter. They say the mess in your life is as big as the mess on your desk.

11. Orga­nize your files

    You need to have an orga­nized folder struc­ture both on your com­puter and in your book­shelf. Num­bers are good. Assign a num­ber to each client or project. Bet­ter yet, assign num­bers to both. Fig­ure out a log­i­cal struc­ture to have inside your project fold­ers. You’ll work faster and smarter know­ing exactly where those PSD files are going and where you can find the invoice you are look­ing for.

    Lea Alcan­tara run­ning Lealea Design wrote this fan­tas­tic arti­cle on orga­niz­ing your project files. Read it and read also the com­ments below it, you’ll find some great exam­ples of clean and log­i­cal folder structures.

12. Do what you like, like what you do

    Last but def­i­nitely not least—rather the oppo­site. This was a motto at my pre­vi­ous work­place and it’s per­haps the most impor­tant advice one can give. If you’re an entre­pre­neur, it’s likely that you’ve found, and are doing, what you enjoy. Con­grat­u­la­tions, it’s wonderful.



    How­ever, many peo­ple still take on work they don’t like. Some­times you may have to take one for the money if you want to be able to pay the rent in time. But next time, before you do, please con­sider if it’s really worth it. Don’t be greedy, be great.