I have worked out of my home for nearly my whole life. Out of necessity, I have learned some tricks for improving my productivity. Mainly, they all boil down to the necessity of staying in the zone – this is the happy, fulfilling state of productivity when the day seems to fly by because you are concentrating so hard and so completely on a mesmerizing task. It is actually easier to get into this highly productive state at home than at work. Nevertheless, you need to do everything you can to keep yourself in the zone.
- Don’t answer the phone. Phone calls are a terrible distraction. The worst thing about answering them all immediately is that you teach your customers, lenders, suppliers, and employees to call you at the drop of a hat when things get tough. Surprisingly, if you are a little tougher to get a hold of they can sometimes solve their problems on their own. I like to avoid answering calls immediately. Instead, I allow phone messages to pile up and then I deal with them all at once.
- Don’t do email first thing in the morning. Responding too quickly to your emails is another great way to bust up your home office routine. It is better to batch those as well. I try not to even open up my email until later in the day. If you begin with your email, you will quickly find yourself doing less important tasks, generating additional unnecessary work, and distracting yourself from the work that really matters – meeting deadlines, closing deals, and collecting checks.
- Eat the frogs first. This means getting your unpleasant chores done first. I number all my chores each evening or morning and then force myself to do the top one or two first thing in the morning. Usually, the call or confrontation isn’t anywhere near as disturbing or as time-consuming as I feared. I also feel great for the rest of the day because I know I accomplished something that was tough for me to do or say.
- Use games to stop procrastination. When you are working in your home office you don’t have a boss watching you anymore or peers to inspire you. For example, to overcome call reluctance, I often find it helps to imagine that when I call someone I’m just calling their answering machine.
- Take a baby step to get started. Another great trick is to just tell yourself you are just going to do something for five minutes. You will often find that once you are started you fall into the flow state and you work until the task is finished.
- Leverage your advantages. Use all the resources around you to be more productive. Have your wife or children help with simple tasks. Make use of your assistants, co-workers, and others around you. Just because you are alone at home doesn’t mean you can’t be on the phone every hour checking up on people, assigning tasks, and leveraging the talents of others to get things done.
- Bliss out. It is easier to be spiritual at home than in the office. Use this to your advantage. You have more ability at home to be serene, in the moment, and happy. You don’t need to conform to inefficient social conventions. In fact, you have more time to meditate, feel the balls of your feet, and enjoy the fact that you are alive.
- Don’t wear pajamas. I think it is better to dress up for work at home just like you would at the office. Clothing is a psychological cue for you even if no one else notices it. I think people can tell if you are answering the phone in your pajamas. Don’t do it.
- Watch out for sound quality. Remember that small sounds travel when you work at home. More likely than not, the other party on the phone or the Zoom call will hear the clatter in the kitchen, the flushing toilet, or the dog in the background. You need to be sensitive to these sounds and not allow them to impact your listener. This means no music during phone calls. No television in the distance. Above all, don’t wash dishes or clean cabinets while on the phone with a client. They can hear the noises and know that you are distracted.
In the absence of office peer pressure, you need to find other ways to make yourself productive. Creating a happy, calm, quiet atmosphere will go a long way toward allowing you to outperform your office self by making it easy to concentrate and harder to be interrupted.
