How I Balance Work from Home life

I have been working from home for a little over a year now, so I thought I would shed a little light into how I do it. It is probably one of the harder jobs I have done, because I am my own boss and able to take entire day to do laundry or scroll Pinterest for home decor ideas if I want to..

So about 2 months into working from home, I realized that even though I was my own boss (and maybe especially because I was..) I needed to create a daily schedule for myself. Every day didn’t have to look the same and it’s so important to keep it “loose”. I didn’t want to feel bad for not doing one thing on Tuesday if a friend or customer called and wanted to have lunch. Here is how I laid out my basic schedule.

9am: Coffee & me time ( reading, journaling, etc.)

9:30-11:30am: work ( this changed depending on what day it was. Monday this looked like sending out emails, and catching up from the weekend. Thursday this could be used for posting the blog and marketing.)

11:30-12:30: Lunch

12:30-2:30: Anything I want ( house work, target, layout and read, take a nap, etc.)

2:30-4:30: work (customer follow up, team training, create content, etc.)

The key for me was to not put so much on my list that I didn’t feel like I could take time out of the day if I wanted to do something not specifically “work” related.

I used that system for 6 months or more. It helped my realize how long certain tasks would take me and which ones made the most sense to group together. In the fall of last year, I switched up a little by removing the time slots in each day. I knew what needed to be done each day, usually 3-4 tasks. I have a tendency to become more anxious and not so much myself in the fall/winter months, so I felt like this was a good time to change up how I worked. I would take the 3-4 tasks that needed to be completed each day, do them, and then when those were done I could either continue to work if it was a good day or take the rest of the day to do things away from the computer. This way, I knew I was getting my work done and didn't need to feel bad if I took the rest of the day to hang pictures or clean baseboards.

The key to working at home, at least for me, is to create a balance that makes you feel like you were productive and like your heart is happy at the end of each day. That’s the perk of working for yourself at your house in your sweatpants!

A lot of things have changed in the past few months for so many of us. Many are now working from home and feeling the pressure to do it all everyday. My advice is to set a schedule that allows you to get what needs to be done done, but to also allow flexibility for those days that life throws you a curve ball.