Work-from-home success tips from a successful work-from-home-er

I think successful freelancers have missed a huge opportunity in 2020. We should be teaching seminars to business managers and employees about how to successfully navigate remote work.

Video conferencing, remote collaboration & project management tools might be new to the general population, but this is the world some of us have inhabited for more than a decade.

Here are a few suggestions for making a successful go of this work-from-home business.

1. Set hard time limits,

The goal here is not to improve your productivity, but to safe guard your personal life. I know that sounds a little weird, but one of the biggest traps in remote working is that the computer is always RIGHT THERE. You'll find yourself thinking, "I'll just check my e-mail and see if John responded." Three hours later, you are still hammering away at the keyboard.

If you only end up with one take-away from this post, let it be this: work-hours are work hours and personal-hours are personal. Hard stop; no exceptions.

When you find your work life and personal life bleeding into one another, you end up noever fully committing to either, and both suffer.

That's not to say that you can't-- your arrangement with your employer providing-- decide to take a two-hour lunch to meet with an old friend who's back in town for a brief time... but you need to be clear that you are trading two business hours for two personal hours. Keeping that hard line sacrosanct in your mind will be huge in making this endeavor work for you, your employer and your family (if applicable).

2. Define your workspace.

Where you work doesn't really matter, so long as it meets the needs of the work you do. But you do need to define a space that signifies "okay, it's time to work." Similar to the time constraints, the use of space can contribute to the "bleeding" between your work and personal life that can be detrimental to both.

This doesn't have to be as rigid a process as you might think. I don't actually have a home office, and haven't for some time. I write at my kitchen table, from the couch in the den, from a high ridge on a hiking trail far outside of any cell service area. I once did a gig for a client from the business center in a hotel while on vacation with my family from Walt Disney World.

Here's the distinction: wherever I am, my office comes with me. Most of the time I can carry out 99% of the functions of my job with my phone and a small bluetooth keyboard. But I always carry a backpack that has a couple of reference books, a notebook and writing implements. Whenever I sit down (or occasionally, stand) to write, I lay these out in a particular arrangement around me.

This small ritual serves as a mental trigger that, for the next few minutes to few hours, we are at the office, be it the corner of the kitchen table, a table at the coffee shop around the corner, or a park bench in a city far from home. I have established a physical setting that means "work" that almost immediately puts me into a separate frame of mind than if I were sightseeing, visiting with friends or lounging around the house.

When I'm done, these workday accoutrements go back into the pack and I can come back to the present moment in a non-work frame of mind.

3. Dress the Part

No, no three-piece suit. But, as with the other two, in my mind, pajamas are for lounging. When it comes time to work, I get dressed in real clothes. Maybe not anything as "fancy" as if I were going to go into the office. But something that clearlly doesn't say "I just got out of-- or could imminently head to-- bed."

All of these are versions of the same thing: creating and maintaining a mindset that will lead to a successful remote-work experience. Because the mindset is the single biggest trap that threatens that success. You have a long, nearly unbroken record of enjoying (or at least experiencing) your personal life in your home. You will find that the habits you formed in that time will often lie at odds with the behaviors you need to engage in while working. Comfort, entertainment, pleasure and distraction are the order of the day at home, while focus, process and discipline are the typical courses of action at the office, even for those of us in creative professions.

It is possible to work successfully from home, but protecting your personal life from the demands of your work life is critical, and you won't have a daily commute and the physical walls of the office to do it for you.