Create Good Habits. Kill the Bad Ones
Everyone is a slave to their habits. One of the reason we have a designated "work space" like an office is that it puts us into a zone where we form habits. We check email every 20 minutes. We attend 2-3 meetings a day. We take lunch at noon. Get coffee at 3 to make it thru the day. The work day habits are the hardest to break (especially if you came from they type of corporate environment).
If you work for yourself you may have your own habits. Check your email on your phone all day and night (even when you are at dinner with someone). Aimlessly browse Facebook or Instagram during the day losing focus on tasks at hand. We all have our good and bad habits. But when working remotely you need to be disciplined on creating different types of habits. If you only have 2-4 hours a day focused on work you need to be efficient and focused
Here are some good habits:
1. Organize your time that aligns with your mood and environment. We work in three basic modes: 1) creative 2) mindless 3) preparation. You don't want to do creative tasks while you have high likelihood in being interrupted. It's better to do mindless tasks (repetitive stuff). You don't want to bounce back and forth between preparation tasks and mindless...because you won't focus.
If your creativity is higher at night. Than organize those tasks at night. Find the right time and environment for the task.
2. Eliminate distractions. If email, social media or text messages distract you, than turn it off for a period of time. The world won't end in the next hour if you don't respond.
3. Use your calendar. If you have trouble sticking to a regimen, than use your calendar. Let it remind you that you need to move on to another task.
4. Know when to stop. If you are like.me you can start working on a task and never stop. Even when the task is complete, you begin to do more or enhance the original task (scope creep). This will kill your efficiency. If you notice you need to do more than originally planned. Create a new task for another day.
If you work for yourself you may have your own habits. Check your email on your phone all day and night (even when you are at dinner with someone). Aimlessly browse Facebook or Instagram during the day losing focus on tasks at hand. We all have our good and bad habits. But when working remotely you need to be disciplined on creating different types of habits. If you only have 2-4 hours a day focused on work you need to be efficient and focused
Here are some good habits:
1. Organize your time that aligns with your mood and environment. We work in three basic modes: 1) creative 2) mindless 3) preparation. You don't want to do creative tasks while you have high likelihood in being interrupted. It's better to do mindless tasks (repetitive stuff). You don't want to bounce back and forth between preparation tasks and mindless...because you won't focus.
If your creativity is higher at night. Than organize those tasks at night. Find the right time and environment for the task.
2. Eliminate distractions. If email, social media or text messages distract you, than turn it off for a period of time. The world won't end in the next hour if you don't respond.
3. Use your calendar. If you have trouble sticking to a regimen, than use your calendar. Let it remind you that you need to move on to another task.
4. Know when to stop. If you are like.me you can start working on a task and never stop. Even when the task is complete, you begin to do more or enhance the original task (scope creep). This will kill your efficiency. If you notice you need to do more than originally planned. Create a new task for another day.
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