Your house might be in the full festive swing, but if you’ve got work to do between Christmas and New Year you’re going to need to focus. Here’s a guide to getting work done…
It might be Christmas, but sometimes there’s work to be done. If you’re office based it’s fine as you can detach yourself from the festivities of home to focus on work.
But if you’re a freelancer or are working from home over the Christmas period, then you might struggle.
Here are some tips to help you work from home between Christmas and New Year…
Give yourself set work times
If you’re not on the clock or working on a specific project, then all you need to do is simply set aside some time to do a bit of work.
Depending on your workload, this could be as a little as half an hour a day to check emails or a couple of hours in the afternoon to get some serious work done.
The key here is to stick to your timetable. Don’t run over or miss a day out. Doing this means that both you and your family will be able to better plan your time.
Only do work that’s a priority
At this time of year there’s no use just doing some day-to-day work that could really wait until January. Instead, focus only on things that need to be done.
Look ahead in your schedule and plan the work accordingly. But be wary – if you’ve got a big deadline in January you might want to do a bit of day-to-day work in between Christmas and New Year to give you enough time in January to get the project work done.
Don’t go into office without a reason
If you’re working from home, you’ll hopefully have your own home office set up. This is a good idea because it provides a physical and mental barrier between your home life and your working world.
The temptation is that during this period you might find you have a spare half an hour and end up wandering into your home office ‘just to check emails’.
Don’t fall for this trap – what begins as half an hour could end up being 3 hours. Keep out of your home office unless you have a very specific reason to go in.
Shut down and close up
One way to stop you from getting involved in work, or just going on your laptop to check emails, is to make sure you shut everything down when you’re done.
Turn off computers, put away any papers, switch of lights and printers, and close the door. You’re done for the day.
Of course, we live in a mobile world now so even with your laptop closed you’ll still be getting emails. This means you’ll need to turn off notifications from your email – do this once you’ve left the office.
There are even apps that allow you to turn off email notifications for set time periods. It might be worth installing one of these over the festive period.
Posted by The Secret Businessman