3 Simple Ways To Be More Productive As A Remote Employee

I’ve heard it a hundred times: “I could never work from home, I’d get too distracted.” Or, “I’d get bored.” Or some variation of people not knowing how to work well from home.

Working remotely looks easy from an outside perspective, but there are plenty of mentality mind games that plague successful solopreneurs, especially with feeling productive. There are obvious solutions such as working from a public space or making sure I ‘get dressed for work’, but those ideas don’t change the big picture. Here are three ways that I’ve been able to overcome some of the solopreneurial struggles:

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1. Limit screen time – 

When I first started freelance writing, it was so easy to take my computer into my bedroom after writing or working all day. I’d fall asleep watching Netflix like I used to. When my alarm would go off in the morning, I’d stay in bed and switch from the Netflix tab to Microsoft Word or WordPress and go back at it.

Y’all. I had not even brushed my teeth before I started working. BAD IDEA. I had no boundaries between my work and my play, and I felt like I could never leave being ‘on’.

Now, I’ve started leaving my computer at my desk. No more TV in my room. Other tips to separate work and play are to mute apps when you’re ‘off-hours’, hide notifications on your phone, and do not answer work-related texts outside of the hours you’ve set for yourself.

2. Create a schedule – 

Hours you set for yourself, huh? YES. Perhaps the biggest mistake I made when deciding to be my own boss was writing a bunch on weekends and feeling like I constantly had to catch up. I was doing all the things, all the time and not getting anywhere.

Here’s what I did: I bought a planner. I started living by my Google Calendar. I stopped freaking out about when I was going to fit all of the things in because I gave myself time to do them and stopped multi-tasking all the time.

I have my gym classes, creative time, pitching time, posting time, working for other people time, working for me time, and even ‘get up and take a break’ time on my calendar. My theory is that if I can’t be accountable to my own schedule, then what can I be accountable to? Which leads me to my final lesson:

3. Know when to stop – 

I used to write a to-do list every morning on a whiteboard and erase things as I accomplished them. Then, I kept adding things to the whiteboard in the empty spaces. I never felt like I was accomplishing anything, and my list was always as long as the whiteboard allowed. This led to me staying at my desk for 12+ hours a day and going to bed wondering if I’d really moved the needle for myself.

Then, I gave myself permission to succeed.

I stopped erasing all the things I had accomplished, and simply did what I promised myself I’d do each day. As a freelancer, the workload I take on from other people is as finite as I choose for it to be. As a solopreneur, the list of things that I want to accomplish will never end. It’s my responsibility to separate my work and my life.

Tell me below: How do you best work from home?