If you’re like me, you only have one employee. And so you need to treat yourself right! Here are seven ways to be an amazing boss to yourself.
1. Have a dedicated workspace!
If you showed up at an office to work and they told you to just sit anywhere you see a chair, you would be salty wouldn’t you? They should be providing you with a desk and a space that’s solely yours for working. Is there a spare bedroom that you could claim? For me, my office/studio is the “formal” living room. We are not formal people and we do all our living in the great room at the back of the house that has the big TV. The only downside to me working in this room is that it has no door. But I’ve got a business to run and things to get done!
Now if you don’t have the space in your home to have an office or desk that is yours all the time – think about ways you can easily do set up and take down. Like if you work at the kitchen table with your laptop, can you have a box or bin that you keep all your work stuff in so you can easily clear the table for dinner? Can you set hours where a certain spot in the house is yours? Like from 10am-Noon and 2pm-5pm the kitchen table is mom’s office – no touchy!
2. Set up your tech!
Speaking of your desk, how is your tech set up? What things do you need to make your life easier and get your work done? I zoom ALL the time. So, my desk is set up so that there are small ring lights attached to my main monitor so that I’m always ready to zoom. I also recently invested in a double monitor setup. It wasn’t super cheap, but it’s been such an amazing improvement – I do so much work where having two screens to go back and forth makes life so much easier. I also am working on having a setup in my office that is a good space to shoot videos and reels. The easier you make it to work, the more work you will get done. If you were working for someone else you would fully expect them to provide all the tech you need to get your job done – treat yourself the same way!
3. Sit down ready to go!
One of the biggest things that helps me when I’m sitting down at my desk for the day is to know exactly what I need to be working on. If you work for someone else, they tell you what to do. But if you work for yourself and wear all the hats, you need to have a plan! I keep all my to-dos in Asana and spreadsheets, but I also spend some time planning each week to make sure that I know exactly what needs to get done that week to keep things moving. This will reduce your stress and set you up for a productive week.
4. Batch your work and your days!
Another thing that is really helping me these days when I sit down to work is having days dedicated to different type of work. As a solo business owner there are so many different types of work you have to be doing. You have the actual work that produces the products or services that you sell and then you have a million other things that go into promoting and selling that work. For me for example that means that I spend all day Monday on content and social media and marketing work – I call it Media Monday. I also have a specific day of the week to work on filming videos – so I only have to do my full hair and makeup once a week!
5. Try tomato timers!
When you don’t have the structure of an office full of colleagues, It is soooo easy to get distracted. I mean the entire world seems like one giant distraction nowadays, but that might just be me. But one of my best strategies for staying on track is using timers. I really like the pomodoro method – a 25-minute sprint of focused work followed by a 5-minute break. I find that I really hustle to get things done during the 25 minutes. Plus, if I fall down a scroll hole or get distracted reorganizing the pantry (yes that has happened to me!) the timer goes off and is that instant reminder to get back to what I should be doing.
6. Take breaks before your broken!
Give yourself lots of breaks. And make them fun breaks. You are the boss – you are building a life and business for yourself, so make it a life and a business that you love. Most days of the week the man and I sit down for lunch and watch an episode of one of our favorite shows like Bob’s Burgers. One of the reasons that folks in an office must be there for so long is because there are so many things that can distract you and slow down your work – coworkers, meetings, bosses. But at home you can structure your day however works best for you. So, if you need a mid-morning break to take a walk in your neighborhood – do it!
7. Count on community!
Working at home can be super lonely. Especially nowadays with the world being as crazy as it is. I started looking for a virtual coworking community a while back so that I would have folks to work with, but I couldn’t find what I wanted. So I created it. My working hours that I listed above? Four of them are in coworking sessions Monday through Thursday. And nothing has been better for my productivity – or my mental health for that matter – than logging onto coworking and having friendly faces to work with.
Just because you work at home alone, it doesn’t have to mean feeling isolated and alone. Even if you’re part of a bigger team, it helps to have a community of other creative folks to be around for support and encouragement. So check out our coworking membership – because we get more done together.
Want to learn more?
Do you think coworking might work for you? We have monthly planning and coworking memberships where we utilize the timer methods to knock out tons of work 25 minutes at a time.
Want to learn more? Click here!