How To Create A Daily Routine While Working From Home

Do you struggle to stick with a regular schedule now that you’re not at the office? There’s been a long debate over the benefits of working from home versus keeping to an office, but thanks to COVID, we are living that debate on a global scale. Billions of people around the world are now trying to figure out how to work from home surrounded by kids, pets, spouses or without a real home office to use. I’m currently sat writing this on my dining room table with not a lot of room to spread out, and it takes a lot of effort to stay productive most days.

Just because you may not work a typical 9-to-5 workday schedule anymore. doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to create, and stick, to a self-imposed work schedule. It will keep you on track with work productivity and keep your mind alert. If you have kids, this can also apply to young families. Routine may sound montonous but it gives our day structure that is something the world is desperately craving now.

The key to crafting the perfect schedule is to plan out your workday - and STICK TO IT. You must strive to efficiently manage your time and work day to accomplish the tasks you set out to do. I’m giving you a template to help you structure your day, you can add or remove steps as needed for your personal situation or career but this is what helps me stay on point when the days start to melt together.

Start Every Workday As If You Are Going to the Office

You can’t let the comfort of being home prevent you from developing a, “going to the office” mindset every morning, evening, or night that you begin working. The very first step you should take in accomplishing this is to set up a “home office”. A space that you can return to every day and ideally one that doesn’t need to be put away every night. Not everyone is that lucky but it’s something to strive for.

If you have a family, spouses or roommates living with you, designate your office hours and ask them to keep interruptions and distractions to a minimum.

Decide How Often You Will Work

If you don’t control your schedule, your schedule will soon control you.

As you build a system to manage the time you’re going to work, you need to make the most important decision. How often will you work? A flexible routine is both a blessing and a curse for anyone working from home.

It’s easy to take less jobs than you’d ideally want, or become overwhelmed with too many projects. Instead of finding yourself in one extreme or the other, set a frequency beforehand.

Will you work seven days a week? Four days a week? Forty hours, no more and no less? How many hours a day you work will ultimately depend on how many opportunities and clients you have and how much money you want to make.

Decide your boundaries ahead of time.

Eat Your Lunch

Just as if you were going to an office, you need to eat daily meals. You need energy to work. Also, because you are working from home, it can be easy to develop unorthodox work habits, like not eating because you want to power through a project.

Remember to eat regularly. It will break up the monotony of work, give you energy, and let you take a break. I also recommend taking the full hour. If you finish eating, maybe take a quick nap, play with your kids or tidy the house a bit. Incorporating this into your daily schedule helps you to stay on top of the other areas in your life too.

Decide Your Work Hours

It is relatively easy for me to tell you to work from 9AM to 5PM. Life, however, is not that simple.

You’re working from home now and you don’t have to adhere to the typical office hours. You only need to set times when you’re able to work. If you have kids, maybe that means you wake up at 4 or 5 AM to work while everyone else is sleeping and you finish by lunch. Whether you work from nine to five, five to midnight, midnight to seven AM, or beyond the typical eight hour day, you must set your work hours. It will give you a routine to follow. Most importantly, it will offer your work structure for you to get through the day

Set your hours so you know when you are working.

Accomplish All Work Hour Tasks

Know what you must do during your work hours and do it. Accomplish your work. Get things done. Then do it again tomorrow. It goes without saying that if you have work to do, do it. As a procrastinator, I’ve learned that the hard way. The work doesn’t disappear, it just accumulates.

There are a ton of ways to stay productive and on-task while working from home via social media blocking apps, tracking your time between distractions and trying to beat your own time, noise-cancelling headphones, or investing in project management software like Monday.com or Trello to give yourself accountability.

Make Use of a Reliable Time-Tracking App

Now that we’re all stuck at home, you need to start using a quality time tracking app.

It can help you figure out if you are working in an efficient manner. If you’re a freelancer or services based business, this can also help you figure out how to bill your clients appropriately for hours worked.

You can use work hour and time tracking apps, like the one at Due.com or Toggl.com, to keep reliable track of your work hours. Time flies when you are working, it is easy to lose track of time as you work. Use an app to bill accurately and earn the money you deserve. I like to use the built-in time tracker with Dubsado.com because I can directly apply it to an invoice for easy handling.

You have a personal life, you may have chores, errands, and family responsibilities to manage. Your time is important, so keep track of it.

Make Time for Workouts

Yes, I know. How is exercise related to your working habits?

The truth is that you should always make time for a 30+ minute workout routine every day you work. If you make it part of your schedule it will be something to look forward to and will help you form your routine.

As you work, you will be sitting down for prolonged periods of time. Too much sitting can compress veins in your legs, impact heart health and muscle tone. Moreover, it can make your body stiff to movement.

Plus, when you make workouts part of your schedule, you will break the monotony of work and have something to look forward to during your work schedule.

Don’t Sleep It Off

You need rest and you need time to sleep, but don’t overdo it. Regular sleep at the same time every day will help you craft, and keep, to your schedule.

But beware–if you give in to procrastination, or start sleeping too comfortably for long periods, you will disrupt your work schedule.

Set an alarm just like you would if you were heading into the office every day. However early you have decided to start working, don’t let yourself sleep in and offset the schedule.

Stick To The Schedule

As I mentioned before, you should take this schedule template and adapt it to your own life. The biggest takeaway for you is to take these days and create a schedule that fits your life and work responsibilities. Then stick with it every single day. Consistency is the way to go, my friends.

In Short..

Treat every work day at home as if you are going to the office. Decide how many days in the week you will work according to your schedule. Make time to eat regularly and exercise. Decide your actual work hours and accomplish all daily tasks that you set out to do.

Use a good time-tracking app to keep track of billable work hours. Don’t sleep away the day unnecessarily. But most important of all, stick to your routine. This is your job and your life.

Use these tips and you will craft the perfect work schedule for yourself to get through COVID-19. Stay safe out there!