Set Your Office Hours

If you work from home it can be helpful to have a flexible working day to fit in around family and home life but don’t blur the lines between the two. Create a structure of core hours.

Start work at roughly the same time each day. By all means take breaks during the day to have some ‘home’ life, or time to get chores done. But place a time limit around these. Set a fixed start time and finish time to your working day or your likely to end up working late into the evening – just because there are still things to be done.

Plan your time at the beginning of the week and if you need to take a half day for home based tasks or school commitments – sports day, school play, car servicing etc. Book this in and plan your work around it. How many hours do you work in a week? Spread them out across six days rather than five or work four long days and have three days off.

When working from home you can at least choose the hours you want to work but make sure it’s not getting in the way of the rest of your life. Working at weekends can be a good time to catch up on things at the end of the week, or spend some time planning for the week ahead. There’s no reason why you need to stick to 9-5 but make sure that you don’t end up working a 50-60 hour working week.

If your family and friends are complaining that they never see you, take a look at whether you’re really using your time effectively.