With a lot of other people moving to work from home I thought I’d share my routine, it varies slightly but this is always what I aim for.
I don’t have a boss and have about 1 meeting obligation every 3 months so that will certainly be different for most of you but I thought I’d share it anyway.
7-10 am – Focused Work.
My alarm goes off at 6.55 am I roll out of bed, then go into the spare room where I’ve got an armchair set up near the window with my laptop nearby that I put there the night before. This is my best time for work, everything’s quiet, the dog is still in his crate and I can get through all my focussed work for the day. I don’t check emails, no social media, for me it’s mostly writing, plus I get to work in my dressing gown.
At 8 am I go and make coffee for my myself and my wife while I let the dog out but then it’s straight back to it.
10-12 am – Dog Chores
He’s still a puppy so he still needs to be watched if he’s up out the crate so a couple of hours to feed him, walk him, play and then we hang out and I read usually.
12 – 5 – Unfocussed work
I haven’t nailed this part of the day, it goes into emails, sometimes visitors come over, sometimes I’ll have some errands in town but I normally get a few hours of dedicated work to important tasks, of which I’ve normally got a big to-do list on the go. Which happen in the home office.
Then I’m done, if I have a particularly busy afternoon not working I’ll work for an hour or two after dinner but the bulk of the important work happens in those first three hours.
The most important part is having a routine, or as Cal Newport put it in Deep Work you need your deep work rituals:
- Decide where you work and for how long
- What are your rules once you start work, mine are no emails, no social, no Ahrefs which is an SEO tool packed full of data that’s fun to look at but doesn’t help to browse
- How are you going to support yourself during work, e.g, have snacks to hand, have plenty of water, start with a nice coffee, a break after 30 minutes, you get to decide
Good luck to those moving to work from home.
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