8 Realistic Tips For Time Management When Working From Home

While working from home eliminates the hassle of staying in a traditional work setting, it also tests your time management skills and abilities. As a stay-at-home entrepreneur, effective time management is exceedingly important to achieve success. 

Working at home has become very popular during this period as most companies are trying to cope with COVID-19. If you manage your time well, you can work on your business and live a balanced life. 

The unifying factor across every job and industry is your ability to manage your time and prioritize your tasks. Since managing your time effectively is considered necessary for remote workers, this article has been put together to educate you on realistic tips for time management, which you could apply for optimum productivity. 

Below are the best time management tips and practices worth trying. 

8 Realistic Tips For Time Management When Working From Home

1. Keep Track of Your Time

You cannot manage your time without knowing how you spend it. This implies that you must have that knowledge before drafting a realistic schedule. Do you underestimate or overestimate the time spent completing a task? Do unproductive activities take up your time? You can only find out if you keep track of your time. 

You can download any time-tracking app on the Internet and use it. Some good examples are RescueTime and Clockify, which are user-friendly. 

With the information they offer, you can determine how long it takes you to complete a task and the unproductive activities that distract you.

2. Plan Your Schedule Ahead of Time

Once you have determined the amount of time spent on specific tasks, you can begin planning your daily schedule. Without a daily routine, it isn’t easy to maintain focus. 

So, you end up spending the day without achieving much. Proper scheduling is among the most effective tips for time management for any individual who wants to be generally productive. 

Recent technological advancements have made schedule planning easy. Modern calendar tools help you maximize your time without overstretching yourself. 

Taking a few minutes every night to plan for the next day will help you accomplish more. Also, ensure you give room for breaks, exercise, household chores, and lunch.

3. Consider Your Energy Levels While Planning

The only person who knows you is you! 

This means you know specific hours of the day when you are highly motivated to work. In truth, you can not be fully productive for all 24 hours of the day. If you work from home, it is important to find your best working hours and stick to them. For instance, most remote workers prefer to wake up late. 

You might sleep until midday and work until night if you are in this category. Of course, short breaks must be added in between. Having afternoon meetings will work best for you, but this implies that you may have to stay up late at night. The best option is to discover what works for you, as it enables better time management throughout the day.

4. Stay Away from Irrelevant Meetings

Stay away from irrelevant tasks; they may seem productive, but in essence, they waste your time. Assuming you have set up a meeting, ensure you have a clear idea of the agenda and desired outcome of the meeting. 

After the meeting, you should have a clear plan for the actions needed to be taken. To save time, you can replace some meetings with emails if it will fulfill that purpose.

You can use that time to work on accomplishing a better objective. Your communication lines can be kept open through email; that way, you can encourage effective communication with your clients or colleagues while reducing meeting times.

5. Schedule in Some Down Time

You do not need to work from morning till night to be productive. Doing that will only get you burnt out due to needless busywork. Rather, you must understand that things will come up, and strategic breaks will be needed all through the day. 

Ensure you make room for gaps to accommodate unforeseen events that can occur at any time. Even if nothing comes up, take a break and relax a bit.

You often feel like an underachiever when you create gaps in your calendar; however, it is the exact opposite. If you apply the 80/20 rule, you will find out that you do not need to spend as much time on certain tasks.

6. Have A Designated Workspace

Pick separate areas or rooms around the house and set it up to be your workspace. For instance, you can carve out a section of your wide corridor or an unused room for work purposes. Consistently applying this time management tip helps you create a connection between your mental focus and the physical space. Also, try to find quiet spots in the house as they will help you concentrate more. 

7. Spot Distractions and Eliminate Them

As a remote worker, you will encounter some unique interruptions and distractions that come with working from home. The common factors could be your family, household chores, or even the television. Sum up the distractions; then, you can adopt methods to reduce them.

For instance, while working in your home office, you can shut the door to avoid getting distracted by your family. Also, when you want to do something fun, ensure it falls within your scheduled break.

8. Utilize Time Blocking Assistants

Time blocking involves setting specific timeframes for tasks, events, or activities you wish to undertake. It is a widely used and effective time management technique. After creating the time blocks, you can add them to your calendar. Time blocks have proven to be effective in promoting your focus on a particular task for a certain period. 

However, to make this technique work, you need to have the right tools. They include:

• A calendar app for creating time blocks and receiving reminders
• A time tracker that tells you the required time for a specific task
• A to-do app or organizer that helps you prioritize

9. Dress like you’re going to the office

One of the best ways to put your self in working mood is by dressing up. Don’t just be on your pajamas and feel that you will be in a working mood. Pyjama’s are for sleeping, so your guess is as good as mine. When you are focused, you manage your time effectively. 

Getting up and wearing good clothes even though you are not going out is a great time management tip. Wearing your best clothes and taking a seat will help you get in a frame of mind to focus on your work projects. 

10. Minimize social media distractions

One of the biggest distractions worldwide today is social media. Is social media constantly distracting you? 

One of the best ways to minimize social media distraction is to log out of your social media accounts during work time. You can remove them from your web browser shortcuts or try working on a private or “incognito” browser so you can’t auto-login to any social media pages.

If you can get rid of social media distraction, you have conquered one of the time management issues. 

Conclusion

Working from home can be exciting and stressful all at the same time. You avoid the stress of commuting to the office, but at the same time, you might not take it seriously as there is no supervisor to monitor you. You will be accountable for managing your time and achieving the result. 

As we all know, time is one of your valuable resources, meaning you must manage it properly. 

Working from home can be an exciting experience, but if you don’t practice time management, you will not achieve much. We are sure you can pick some tips to apply in your remote work life for better productivity.