The 14 Golden Rules Successful Women Use to Work From Home (Part II)

Last week we discussed the first 7 Golden Rules to working from home, and this week there are another 7 great ones to consider. If you missed the article, see the link below!

[fancy_box id=2]Suggested Read: “14 Golden Rules Successful Women Use to Work From Home (Part I)”[/fancy_box]

As mentioned in last week’s post, it is important to structure your work environment to help you be as productive as possible with the designated hours that you’ve set out specifically for work. It is also important to prioritize your tasks, visualize your goals, and always keep yourself accountable to stay on track. These work orientated rules allow you to create the structure that you need to get the most out of your day.

Another critical part of working from home requires your attention to yourself. This is where work-life balance comes in. In order to be successful and reach your goals, you need to incorporate self-care and healthy habits to allow for maximum productivity. So this week I have outlined the final 7 Golden Rules to guide you towards ensuring that you take care of your body and mind in order to prevent burnout.

8. TAKE REGULAR BREAKS

This is something I cannot emphasize enough! Often times we think that working for a whole day straight is the only way to be the most productive, when in-fact it is not. Taking breaks allows your mind to regenerate and you can get back to work with a fresh perspective. Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come when you step away from your work to take your mind off of it for a while.

As mentioned before, these breaks can be strategically placed around your high productivity times to ensure that you get the most out of your day. These are also great times to allow you to avert your attention to personal and family matters in order to create a better work-life balance. This ensures that the strict boundaries you’ve enforced don’t drive family and friends away, but informs them of better times in which to contact you without taking away from your actual work time. So take advantage of these breaks, and make them work to your advantage!

9. STAY CONNECTED

This point falls nicely after “Taking Regular Breaks”. Since you are not in an office environment, you can become very isolated and miss out on the culture of having co-workers to share your day with. So don’t forget to connect with someone during your ‘work day’, using lunch or break times to see friends. This helps to keep your mood elevated, improving your overall productivity in the end. Another great idea for this is to set meetings during the day that allows you to get out of the house for a great change of scenery.

Another part of this is the very important ‘networking’. Be sure to connect with groups and forums where you can share your ideas and experiences with others who are in similar situations as you. This helps to build your support network, creating new resources and opportunities to grow both personally and in your business.

10. REFLECT ON YOUR DAYS WORK

A self-reflection of your progress helps you to keep track of exactly what’s been accomplished, and what requires extra attention. If you aren’t seeing the productivity results that you are aiming for, this is also a great way to assess where you are lacking, and make adjustments accordingly. This is a great way to learn from any mistakes, and enables you to grow and improve your work ethics and habits daily.

In addition to improvement, reflecting on your work is also a critical step in improving motivation in your workspace. After each day it is important to write down each productive thing that you’ve accomplished so that you are focusing on the positive and keeping your mind away from any negative influences. Believing in yourself is key, and this time of reflection enables you to implement motivational strategies to celebrate the wins in your day. Together with growth and motivation, this is a powerful tool to use in order to successful build your business from anywhere in the world.

11. STAY ACTIVE AND LIVE HEALTHY

Staying active and living a healthy lifestyle is a key towards not only physical, but mental wellness as well. The benefits of building healthy lifestyle habits include increased productivity, improved moods, a fresh mind, and it also boosts your energy levels for a more positive overall mind-body effect. A great way to do this is to schedule your gym or activity time into your breaks. This ensures that you are giving your mind a rest, while also getting your body the healthy exercise that it needs. Physical activity is a great way to counter the long days of sitting in the office, and helps to prevent you from living a majority sedentary lifestyle.

Another important aspect of healthy living to keep in mind is to follow a nutritious, balanced diet. Your body needs the right kind of fuel to keep going, and in order for you to be the best version of yourself, you need to ensure that you are getting all the critical nutrients that your body needs each day. It is key to keep a regular eating schedule so that you know that you are not skipping meals when you get distracted with worked. It is also important to avoid having unhealthy snacks in the house. Keep the fridge stocked with healthy, nutritious alternatives, and stay away from the kitchen when that snacking feeling comes around.

12. ASK FOR HELP OR INPUT

We all experience challenges in both our work and life. It is important that if a certain part does not work for you, ask for help, adjust, and try something new in it’s place. Often times we get bombarded with the overwhelm of caring for a home and a family, while also needing to stick to strict work deadlines. This overwhelm can spin your mind into a frenzy, which often leads you to spend more time thinking about how you’re going to manage it all and not enough time spent actually doing it.

The first step is to write it all down so that it is out of your head and onto paper. Next, identify the items that you will be able to conquer on your own, and others that you need help with. This is a great way to establish which areas you’d need help with, and then allows you to delegate the tasks to somebody else. For example, if you find that you need help with groceries, or running errands, you can ask for help from your family or loved ones. Or perhaps you can hire someone to take care of these tasks for you – anything to help save on your time.

13. PLAN FOR MORE THAN YOU EXPECT

Life never follows the perfect plan, and as we all know, sometimes emergencies or unexpected events come up. This is where it is critical to plan some time where you can ‘catch up’ on work that was missed. Or if you simply just need some time to de-stress, this ‘cushion time allows for that as well. By allowing yourself this extra available spot in your schedule, it will help to prevent any extra overwhelm caused by unexpected events, and enables you to stay on schedule.

Now, in order to make this work you have to treat the “cushion time” as a scheduled appointment. This way it will always be available, and you won’t accidentally book that time for someone else, unless they are in fact the unexpected event. Since there won’t always be emergencies, allow yourself the flexibility to choose how to spend that time if it isn’t needed. This can even be designated time to use for creativity, relaxation, or perhaps just extra time spent with your family or loved ones. Treat yourself to this cushion time, and take advantage of the privilege that it provides.

14. CREATE A ’SWITCH-OFF’ ROUTINE

This last rule is often times the most over-looked. However, it is one of the most critical! Switching off from work is a must-do to allow your mind to make the shift from work things in order to focus on the rest of your life. As mentioned before, having that designated area also allows you to ‘walk away’ from the office and into home life. Although for many of us entrepreneurs work can be consuming, we have to ensure that we put effort into having a well-rounded life.

For this “switch-off” routine, as mentioned before, you can start with the self-reflection time at the end of the day by creating a little daily reflection to-do list for the end of each day. This allows you to know exactly what you accomplished in the day, re-schedule missed items or continued items, so that you are not left thinking about them after you are done work for the day. Getting new ideas on paper takes them out of your head for your ‘switch off’ time.

[fancy_box id=2]Suggested Read: “3 Secrets to Being a Happy Ladypreneur”[/fancy_box]

In the end, it’s all about the hustle! If you aren’t going to work hard for your business, then no one else will either. It is so important to do something you truly believe in and find out what works best for you in order to harness that productivity to get the most out of your work day!

Call to Action:

Did you find these last 7 Rules helpful? How else do you ensure success when working from home?
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As always, desire to inspire!