3 Tips for Working From Home

If you work from home or remotely and you find yourself struggling to stay on task or getting burned out, then this video is for you. Hi, my name is Rachel Havocost. I'm a writer and mental health advocate, and I have been working for myself from home remotely for the last five years. And these are my three really helpful tools to navigate being someone that doesn't go into an office or going into a specific place for work. So the first one is treating your home like an office. So this means getting dressed as if you were going to the office or going to the restaurant you work at, or going to the school you work at, or whatever physical place you might go, getting out of your pajamas or your sleepwear and putting on an outfit.

I find that this mentally makes me feel like, okay, I've actually gotten ready for the day. It's personal hygiene. It feels like I'm taking care of myself. And mentally it does create a little bit of a shift. Additionally, setting up a space in your home that feels like this is where I do my work and having that physical boundary so that it's not like you're working any anywhere in the home, which can kind of create a mental confusion around is this where I relax or is this where I'm working? The other thing I like to do is make sure I'm carving out intentional breaks.

So the same way if I was at a physical job outside of my home, I would have a 15 minute break at a certain point in time. I would have a lunch break at a certain point in time and making sure I'm actually putting my work away and focusing on resting, decompressing, and taking my mind off of what I'm doing. In that same vein, my second tip is taking intentional breaks or actually leaving the home. So that may might mean going for a walk, that might mean going and running an errand. That might mean walking, walking down the hallway, whatever it is, to get you outside of that space so that you can have a mental break from the space you're in.

And it feels like you're really actually taking a true break away. My third tip is to change your environment. So sometimes this means going and working in a coffee shop, working at a friend's house. This could also mean moving where your office space in your home is. So sometimes I rearrange my furniture so that my dining room table where I work is in a different part of my house house. And that can kind of create a feeling of freshness and newness, which can help sometimes with stagnancy or just feeling uninspired.

I hope this was helpful, and I will see you next time.