5 Practical Tips for Working From Home

Stephanie is a project process specialist, trainer and mentor. She is the Lead Consultant at Jaeger Consultants Ltd in Nairobi. Stephanie specializes in the human aspect of project management and leadership, and encourages discussion and feedback. She also writes regular blogs on jaeger-consultants.com.

  Career Development  

After working in an office for most of my career, I suddenly found the chance to work from home after I joined a consultancy. Most of the team worked with a virtual office setup, but it was not mandatory; I chose to work from home. Since at the same time I laid off my house help, I found myself having to figure out when and how to get all the housework done.

Many people who get the opportunity to work from home suddenly find themselves faced with a host of new issues. There is no one forcing office hours on you, so you end up either not working enough or working too much. The former affects your output and possibly your income; the latter affects your private life.

At the same time, you get easily sidetracked either by visitors or by things you remember you wanted to do around the house. Finding the right discipline and work/life balance is a fine art and needs some practice.

Here are five tips that have helped me to get productive—but at the same time enabled me to have time to exercise, have a social life and get everything done. They might sound like common sense, but unless you have tried working from home, you don’t know how difficult it can be to concentrate and not get distracted.

1. Have a designated work place. It’s very important to define one specific space as your work space. This can be a designated room, a desk or even a corner of …

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