Lots of people are able to work from home. Technology has allowed it to occur for lots of fields. It’s definitely not going to be the case for the majority of people in the coming years. But it has become something that a good number of people will likely be doing for the rest of their careers.
And it’s not really a new thing either. I remember my grandfather had a home office. He was an insurance agent. He worked from home and likely in the field at a bit. His office was pretty nice and I liked sneaking in there as a kid.
Anyway, there are some traps that you can fall into when working from home. This is one I have done myself many times and one I see others falling into often.
Lack Of A Regular Schedule
As far as I can tell my grandpa worked pretty much a regular 9-5 schedule from that home office. I’m sure he worked similar hours and situations to other insurance agents. But the key was keeping a schedule. Just like you would if you were going to an office or to a job site or whatever.
I’ve been working from home for nearly a decade. I’ve tried to stick to the basic 9-5 schedule. There have been times when I’ve worked earlier in the day and times when I’ve worked through the night to get something done that had a sharp deadline.
But the key is the schedule. The routine.
Process = Results
You hear all the time from successful people that they like to stick to their process. They think about results. They think about big things. But they always try to get back to the process. The day-to-day that will likely lead them to success in the future.
That’s the 9-5 boring routine. It’s not flashy. You don’t see a lot of progress when you’re doing the same thing everyday. But that’s what leads to success in most cases.
Final Thought
One final tip that seems to be something successful people do with their routines. They audit them from time to time. They get their vision. Then they get to work and put their head down. But they step out of the routine maybe every few months or a year and recalibrate. They assess what progress is getting made. They see if they still have the same goal. They make tweaks if they need to and get back to work.
It’s easy to slowly get out of routines. Sometimes the biggest changes you can make are just getting back to the same old same old.