Having a home based business is something extraordinary! It can be so much fun—contrary to popular belief that is. The first thing you need to do is brush off anyone who tells you that you can’t or you won’t like it. Here we will cover everything you need to know from the organization of the physical office to the pitfalls and how to avoid them when you work from home. There is a way around all of it and it’s a liberating experience to work for yourself.
In this article you will learn how to set up a productive home office while also finding out the benefits of a home office and find out how you can make the most out of it.
Before you Get Started
One of the ways to avoid the pitfalls is to make sure you are the type of person that would benefit from a home based business in the first place. This doesn’t mean you are working for a company and just work remotely for them with the option of going to an office if you want to. We are talking complete independence from an office or a company with a company of your own or freelancing.
Your Work At Home Personality
When you decide to work from home, you may have made that decision for many reasons. First, you may want to be home when kids get home—to make a natural break time in that work day to be with them before you get back to it and work until dinner time. You may have decided to have the freedom to travel and to explore your world and still be able to pull an income.
Maybe you’re married and want to be a housewife who works. Maybe you want to build a strong entrepreneurial environment. Either way, you are apt to run into some things you hadn’t anticipated that you need a little help with. We know that being in charge of your schedule—when and how you work, is an awesome thing. But, if you aren’t used to it and If you have no other real responsibilities to plan around—you may fall short in your work day.
Being disciplined is a must but you can do it—depending on what type of business you have—in a way that suites you.
For example. If you are in a project-based business, like a freelance writer for example—you may be able to look at your project roster and when you need your money of course—and plan to work when you want.
If you want to take a certain day off in the week because you’ve woken up and you just feel like sleeping in—you can. Or, maybe you are needing to do some errands you can’t do on a weekend—you can.
You can be completely spontaneous in this case. The problems lie where you are not disciplined enough to get started and then finish what you had planned for the day.
Then, you end up in trouble being backed up at the end of the week and having to play catch up. Maybe losing a client or two because they found someone better and faster or more organized.
That can snowball. We’ve been there—all of us who start a home based business. So, we have to make sure that our personality warrants us to have a business we can manage on our own.
Best Ways to Not Fall in that Trap
Organizing yourself and your work in what is called blocks of time seems to be the trend for home-based business as well as other business. You can be spontaneous with that too but you are more structured in the way you use your blocks of time. You are less libel to goof off in that time. So, what does working in blocks of time look like?
You are planning in blocks of 2-3 or 4 hours. Those are the optimal lengths of time you should work with so that it doesn’t get tedious and you get work done as you should. These are only examples of what and how to create and schedule these time blocks. You are in no way strapped to this guide.
Let’s say you wake up at 6:30, you may want to schedule an hour to yourself before anyone else gets up if that is the home dynamic you have. You can use this time for quiet morning meditation. You can meditate or you can start to plan your day then—rather than the night before. Then from say 7:30 to 8:30—some form of exercise may do you wonders to start the day.
Then breakfast and shower. You are now ready to go! When you are beginning your work day—make sure you know what you will do until lunch. The lunch time is not important to know. It’s when you feel like it although we will suggest that you take that as early in the afternoon as possible. Why? Because eating too late in the afternoon can make you sleepy and less productive. Make sure you aren’t eating heavy either. Have a client lunch?
Make it a salad and sandwich sort of day if you are coming home to a lot of work.
Examples of what you can do between breakfast and lunch are things like—check and answer e mail—return calls—make appointments. Then you can get started on a project for a block of 2 hours.
After lunch, continue project. Follow up on e mails etc…you see what we’re getting at? You will at least have a plan of action to get things done and the day will be productive. Most of what we get backed up on when we procrastinate are silly things. This ends up so frustrating that it can turn us off our business. We certainly don’t want that to happen. It’s far too liberating to work out of your home—you just need to know the ins and outs of doing it properly.
Now for Organizing the Work Space
When you have a workspace—that’s exactly what it needs to be—a workspace. Everyone is different. If we work from a laptop, we may prefer to have that be a mobile thing so we can work in whatever comfortable position we want. However; when we are working from home it’s still important that we view our workspace as an office and not much else. Some of us don’t have a room to devote a workspace exclusively. That’s OK, as long as it has the important elements here—you’re fine.
Your Desk
This one should be planned efficiently. Why? Because you want to make sure that desk area will hold your focus entirely for your blocks of time you have scheduled to be there. If there are too many distractions then that is when you fall into trouble.
Check out this video below on setting up a productive home office. Stefan from Project Life Mastery gives a great tour of his home office and what to include.
For example. You need to have everything you use on an hour by hour basis right there on the desk or inside the desk. If you have to get up too many times during the day—even a four foot walk to a closet or container—you may just have enough leeway to walk over to something else.
And if you think it will be just for a moment then think again—it won’t be. We as humans are easily distracted when we have all this freedom. It’s normal but destructive to our business so when you are organizing your desk and workspace you need to think efficiently first.
What to include in your home office
A great desk for your home office is the LEXA home office desk. It is a very high quality desk and is a corner desk so it will fit in to any corner of your room. The desk has an attractive design to it and will suit anyone’s room. Click here to check it out. It is imperative that you have a good sturdy desk for your home office.
Something else that is just as important as your home office desk is your chair. This is actually probably one of the most important things you need as you will be spending most of your day on the chair.
If you do not have a comfortable chair then you won’t be able to work properly or as efficiently. It as simple as that. I highly recommend you get this chair for your home office. This chair is great because it swivels, reclines and also moves around.
However a desk and chair is all good and it will help you out with your home office but what you really need to get work done is a laptop. A laptop can help you get your work done and if you have a great laptop, you will be able to plough through the work.
The laptop which I would recommend that you get is the Apple Macbook Pro 13 Inch Laptop. The Apple Macbook Pro laptop has a Intel Dual Core i5 2.5 GHz processor. This means that it can run apps rapidly and you will be able to switch between different applications and programs swiftly and without a problem.
It also has a 4GB RAM Memory which means it will not slow down if you load too much software and programs onto it. The Macbook Pro has a massive 500GB Hard drive which should be more than enough for the storage of your work, documents, pictures, videos and anything else that you have.
It is a very thin and powerful laptop which runs Apple OS X Lion. The laptop has a beautiful sleek design to it and you can take it virtually anywhere with you. It also has a long battery life to it which means you can work longer on the beach if you want!
The laptop even includes a HD webcam so you can FaceTime or Skype people where ever you are. You can also record video blogs if you want. This would make a perfect addition to your home office.
The Epson Expression Home XP-322 All in One Printer is an awesome printer that can get all your documents and work printed out. It is an all in one printer which includes copier, scanner and printer. The great thing about this Printer is that it is wireless so you do not need any wires to connect it up.
With it being wireless you can connect near enough any device to it such as your laptop, iPad, tablet or smart phone.
The printer used offers cost effective printing as well as being small and relatively light weight. This is a very good printer if you ask me.
Something else you would need in your home office would be the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. This is the latest phone in the Note range by Samsung. It is a beautiful handset and makes it easy to work and play on the handset.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has a massive 3220 AH battery which means it will has a long lasting battery life. It goes from 0-50% charge in 30 minutes, which is pretty impressive. It is a very powerful phone with a 3GB RAM and 2.7 GHz processor meaning the speed of the phone is absolutely quick.
It has a 5.7 Quad HD Super AMOLED display which makes the screen very crisp and clear. Like with all the other phones in the Note range, this includes the S-Pen which makes it easy to doodle, write and draw using your phone.
Don’t Make your Home Office your Work Office
Prior to making a home based office—people will certainly have a home office for their personal lives. This means files for papers that are attached to what they do in life like mortgage, medical, school and the like. There is a danger in mixing client records and personal records in with each other. Make sure a closet or separate file cabinet is kept for the personal stuff.
Talk to Family
Make sure you have a heart to heart about your office hours and distractions with family. You have to face some facts that you may have to deal with the attitudes from family. They may be having a bit of a challenge taking your work life seriously.
So, in saying that—it’s time to put a lock on the door and lay down the law! If you have children there while you work for part of the time—make sure you have no important client calls scheduled at this time. Most parents have a window of time between when kids get out of school and the other parent comes home. This is the time to take care of administrative things and not something crucial.
If it’s just you and a partner, spouse or roommate make sure you set your boundaries as well. Sometimes people don’t realize you aren’t accessible. They don’t see you as at work and unable to speak to them. Your new work life can be threatening to them. It means there is a time in your day you have to respectfully shut them out.
These are some of the greatest pitfalls people find themselves in. But, if you conquer these few simple hurdles you will never go back to a brick and mortar office.
I hope this article helped you out and you took something away from it. If you think someone else will benefit from this article then please share it with them.
What does your home office look like? What type of stuff do you have in it? Do you have any tips or anything that we have missed out?
Post a comment below, I would love to hear from you!
