Working from home, a survival guide

Being a freelancer means working from home, in between stints at coffee shops or the odd brief occupation of a client’s office. For many who’ve never tried it, working from home sounds like a breeze—a dream, even. Imagine: tapping away on a laptop in your comfiest clothes or blasting your favourite tunes with abandon or taking guilt-free extended breaks at your leisure. Of course, as you know, fellow freelancer, working from home has its pitfalls. Toronto writer Jowita Bydlowksa has researched and written a great piece for Poss.ca on working from home, including hard-earned nuggets of wisdom from Canadian freelancers and her own handy tips on keeping sane in your home office. Here are just a few:

• Give yourself some space. “You don’t need to have an office but have an area that’s your workspace and respect it as such,” Bydlowska writes. Remove distractions and protect your eyes with good lighting and your back and neck with a good chair.
• Prove what a grownup you are by making and sticking to a schedule. Make it as punishing or as relaxed as needed, but once it’s set, don’t make excuses.
• Look the part. Maybe a three-piece suit or stilettos is going too far, but putting on some pants—the real kind, the ones you have to unbutton to take off—can do wonders. Showering isn’t a bad thing to do once a day either.
• Take a break, you lunatic. “On the opposite extreme of not being able to motivate themselves to work are the homeworkers who overwork and don’t take any breaks because they’re perhaps not too confident about being on their own,” writes Bydlowska. Bang on. If you fall into this trap, there’s an app for that. TimeOut for Mac users reminds you to take a break, once an hour for 10 minutes, for example. And there’s a free version, too. There are numerous other options.

The article has much, much more. Read it in full here.

Do you love or hate working from home? Have any tips of your own? We’d like to hear ’em.