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,s or shared workspace.

In our world today, more and more companies are sending workers home to stop the spread of coronavirus.

The transition to this or starting your own business in your house can be difficult. I’ve worked from home for at least half of my week for the last decade and, through trial and error, have found some things that have worked (and not worked).

Here are seven ideas to work from home successfully:

1. Get dressed. It is tempting to get up, throw on a hat and stay in your pajama pants, but fight this urge. Get a shower, eat a good breakfast, grab some coffee, and go to work. The more you can make it like work, the better. Getting dressed gets your blood moving and helps you to move into “work mode.”
2. Have a designated workspace. Depending on your set up, this can be hard, but you must have a workspace. 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 kid’s bedroom, and that is part of it. But have a space set aside where you do work. If it is at the dining room table, it makes it challenging to stop working or disconnect mentally.
3. 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 specific time. For others, like a pastor, this isn’t as clear. It is crucial to 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.
4. The water cooler factor. If you work in an office, interruptions are part of the day. People are stopping by, you getting up to walk around. These can be helpful and intrusive. You must plan for these to work 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. Getting up to move around is. Not only helpful for your body and brain, but also creative thinking.
5. 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 particular websites that are blocked during my work hours, like social media sites, to help me stay focused.
6. Handling interruptions. Working from home, you will still have interruptions. Kids are 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.
7. 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.