It is becoming more and more common to work remotely. Not only in offices, but for churches. Especially with the rise of church plants, more and more pastors find themselves working from coffee shops, their house or a shared work space.

The transition to this or starting your own business in your house can be difficult. After 7 years of working in a church office, we planted Revolution and I’ve been working from home and other places since then.

Here are 6 ways to work from home successfully:

1. Have a designated work space. Depending on your set up, this can be hard but it is important that you have a work space. If you can have a room with a door, this is ideal but not completely necessary. I’ve had seasons where my office was a kids bedroom and that is part of it.
2. Have a clear start and stop time. Some jobs that work remotely have this built in. I have a friend who works for a call center but does it in his house, so he has to sign in at a certain time. For others, like a pastor, this isn’t as clear. It is important define, especially if you are married and have kids, when you will start and when you will stop. This will help to prevent working more than you should and having a clear boundary.
3. The water cooler factor. If you work in an office, interruptions are part of the day. People stopping by, you getting up to walk around. These can be helpful and intrusive. It is important that you plan for these in working from home. I try to break my day up into 90 minute increments and have a break in between that could be as simple as getting more coffee. You also need to keep this in mind as you think about how long your work day should be as your spouse probably isn’t stopping by to talk about fantasy football for 30 minutes while you work.
4. Stay focused. It is easy to work from home and not stay focused. After all, you can see other things that need to be done and no one is looking over your shoulder telling you not to look at blogs, Facebook or the news. You must have a system to stay focused on the task at hand. One of the things I installed was Chrome Nanny and put in certain websites that are blocked during my work hours, like social media sites, to help me stay focused.
5. Handling interruptions. Working from home, you will still have interruptions. Kids knocking on your door, your spouse asking you to do something. This is part of the flexibility of not being in an office, but you have to have a system for handling them, otherwise you won’t get any work done. There are times when my door is locked and the kids leave me alone and times when it is open and they can do schoolwork or play on my floor while I work.
6. Disconnecting from work. If you work from home, you walk out of your home office and your home. You don’t get that 30, 60 minute commute to disconnect from work, listen to sports radio or have some silence before you connect with your family. I used to work and as soon as I was done go into family mode. This doesn’t work as I can be on edge or still thinking about work. Now, I workout, take a walk or read some sports blogs and then go into family mode. You have to learn how to make your commute happen without having a commute.

Working from home isn’t for everyone or for every job. Some people can’t handle the freedom that comes from not having a set start time or not having a boss look over their shoulder. We had someone on our staff team once that struggled to accomplish 30% of their job because of this, so you must be wise when deciding to work from home as it is a stewardship issue for you and your company or church.