If you work from home - come talk to me!

[desklamp]

I've just started a work from home job, and am trying to figure out how to structure my days, the best way of tracking my hours, separating work mode from life mode, etc.

The job itself is great and I'm really enjoying it! I just want to get more organised. Any tips or advice would be welcome. Eg, is there a good app for tracking work hours? Or maybe something I can download onto my laptop?

I do have a separate work space to the rest of the house, so I can close the door and walk away, but I find it very easy to slip into the room into the evenings and do "just a bit more" which is not a great habit to get into.

Worked from home for 6 years for a global company. Found it isolating tbh. Yes I often found myself popping upstairs to the office to do bits. They say you start offp working from home and end up living in the office and that's very true. I'd often want to go away at weekends because I needed a change of scene. There were advantages eg can have repairs done, tradespeople round, be at home for parcels, get the washing done, pop to the shops. I used to go to get my nails done, can attend all school events. My children still went to after school club, holiday club. Fir me it served its purpose but u would not do it again. I do one day per week from home now and thats a better balance for me.

I work from home too and find it very lonely sometimes! I just work wherever my laptop is and that's usually at the dinner table!

I work semi from home and unfortunately dont have a space where I can work, have to work in the lounge cause of the internet/modem. Obviously a problem when the house is full but I manage. Re the loneliness, I'm ok at the moment as my youngest is only 9 so I see people on the school run but I can see this being a problem in a few years.

I work from home but am strict about logging off completely at the agreed hour (I'm not self employed so don't feel I need to be permanently switched on).

It can be lonely but my dh is usually at home during the day (he works evenings and weekends mainly). And I still have other wfh friends locally and we sneak out for a coffee or lunch every now and then.

In some ways I miss the work colleagues socialising thing - but in most ways I really don't.

Imagine yourself in an office. You get there at 9, make a coffee, have a couple of productive hours. Make another coffee. Work for another hour or two. Have lunch and take an hour off. Log back on after lunch.

If you do 6 solid hours at home with no distractions, you are probably doing more and achieving more than if you do 7 hours in an environment with a lot of distractions around you - let's be honest.

I work a lot from home (employed and self employed, but employed also includes some wfh). Toggl is great for tracking hours. I'm not so great at separating home and work, probably because I don't have a home office and work from the dining table!

The better half works from home and always keeps their office as strictly work space only. Logging hours is with a big bit of paper on the wall which then gets transposed to work billing sheets at the end of each week.

Thanks for the replies. I am not worried about being lonely - I've been a sahm for years so this fits my life as-is quite neatly. I still have the flexibility to do the school run, school holidays, etc.

I will look into Toggl, thanks for the tip!

It sounds like I'm doing the same sorts of things as everyone else in the thread. I just need to track my hours better and stay away from the computer at night....

Sorry to jump on here desklamp but how did you get your job? What do you do if you don’t mind me asking? I’m desperately trying to get a work from home job and just can’t find one!

I've been doing volunteer work for a while now in the same field, and made some connections that way. I'm working for a very small company as a PA/Admin.

I only do a maximum per day.
So if I need to do 6 hrs per day, but I need to attend something during the day then I will catch up in the evening. say work 9-12, then 6-9pm.

Otherwise I don't work in the evening. My standard day is to fit in 6hrs between 9-6pm, as this works best for me, but allows flexibility.
I prefer to work 9-1, lunch, then 2-4pm daily if possible as its when i am most productive and not tired.

I often do get chores done I wouldn't if I worked outside of the home such as laundry can go on in the morning, then hung out to in dryer at lunchtime. Or I can prep food at lunch to slow cook in oven for dinner.

I don't have an office space seperate, usually work with laptop from the dining table, or when on the phone I like to walk and talk.

I work from home (self-employed) and have done for 4 years. I love it now but did feel quite lonely and isolated to start with. We got a dog, that solved it-he doesn't gossip, doesn't bitch, doesn't ask for contributions to Irene's leaving present, doesn't complain about the office temperature all day (but he doesn't make brews so I have to make them all myself!). I also get to speak to other people when I take him out for a walk.

The only downside is that DH works away a lot of the week so wants to spend weekends at home whereas I have had enough of being here all week and want to go out.

We now have a small office in the garden-after a few years of working in the attic (too many wasps!) and I do find I'm more productive working away from the house.

Love it that I see more of the DC before & after school (all at secondary now) and am around to (try) to help with homework. Can't see me changing anytime soon.

I've worked from home for the last 7 years, works really well for me. Have a very flexible arrangement so I work more hours in term time than school holidays; even tho DC now at secondary this is still useful. As pp said, without the commute I start work at 7.45am easily.

I don't find it hard to separate out work from home stuff as work is so busy and I'm so engrossed in it. Sometimes I'll work over my hours or check my emails at night. Equally in quieter times I might pop to the shop briefly or put a wash on. I have a wonderful boss who appreciates how much I give and has no issue with flexibility/ give and take. I use GSuite inc calendar to log my hours, although this is more as a guide for me to roughly tally the week's hours.

As pp said, downside can be isolation. I make sure I get out and talk to ppl each day and have a very active social life in the evenings and at weekends to counter this.

I used to write all the work I did down in a work diary - even the odd quarter of an hour, as it all mounted up and needed to be billed.

Best thing I ever did for my own sanity was turn off all the notifications for my emails on my phone. So I couldn’t hear a ping and then think “I’ll just check that” at 9pm or something. I made sure I only checked email when I was ready to start work.

Having set work hours and sticking to them really helps.

I've worked from home full time for four years. I'm self employed so I am on the go more than most, but do I do have a set routine. I start as soon as I get home from the school run, one quick break for a cuppa in the morning, half an hour lunch (sometimes I'll put some washing in or tidy up but it is mostly my actual break whereby I do nothing but eat), another cuppa break when ds gets home from school, work until I cook tea if dp is at work, and then if I have more to do I go back to work until 8:30 at the latest. I do squeeze in things like taking ds to activities and my hobbies, so I can work what seems like long hours. I have to have my own hobbies though as otherwise I would go stir crazy. It is by far one of the loneliest work options in the world and it is important you get out and about. Saying that though, I love being flexible, it works for our family. My dp gets that I am working all day, not at home, and therefore there is no expectation for house things to be done during the day.

I use toggl for time tracking, remember the milk for task tracking and outlook calendar for blocking out my day into working sections.

I also wrote myself some tools to automatically add events to toggl, so if I have a meeting it adds it with the correct client code.

Finally I wrote some tools to extaact data from toggl and load it into Free Agent for generating the invoices

20 years I've worked from home.

I get dressed before I come downstairs, make a coffee whilst the computer is firing up.

I log all my work on my outlook calendar so that I know what was done when and my colleagues know when I am out and about.

I am quite strict about stopping work at my allocated time; I sometimes pop into my office if there is something urgent that needs doing, but I work compressed hours and so that is also the case on my non-work day. I get it back when it suits like yesterday I got home at 4:30 but didn't log back on until about 8 as I was shattered so did half an hour then rather than between 4:30 and 5.

If doing something out of work time suits me then I do it, as it could cause me a headache at a later date. If it can wait, I plan it into my outlook calendar so that I know I have allocated time to do it. That's what is so fab about the outlook calendar, so easy to book things in as time slots to ensure everything is done.