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Working from home may sound like a great idea, but not having a boss standing over you every day may cause your productivity to go down. Other than hiring your spouse or significant other to stand behind you, slapping their palm with a ruler repeatedly (like a school teacher!) to keep you on task, you’ll have to take matters into your own hands. Here are a few tips to keep you on track and off of your couch:

1. Turn off the television.

You may like the background noise, but the second you hear something interesting on TV, you’ll stop what you’re doing and gravitate towards it. Once you decide to take a small break to simply “check out whatever’s on,” one hour will roll into another and before you realize what’s happened, you’ll have wasted an entire day.

2. Work in a different room.

Set up a home office in a spare bedroom, your basement, or even a closet, if you have no other choice. Close the door in order to block out everything else. This not only helps you to focus on your work, but also prevents you from becoming distracted by the rest of the house.

3. Set up a to-do list and stick to it.

Each night before bed, make a list of all of the assignments and other tasks that you need to complete the next day. No matter how mundane the task, it needs to go on the list. For complicated jobs, such as designing a website, break the task down into smaller chunks. This keeps you from becoming overwhelmed and forgetting to complete things.  There are several cool tools that you can use to keep your to-do list organized. One is Wuderlist, which is an awesome to-do-list app. It has an intuitive user interface, and runs across web and mobile devices so that no matter where you are, your list is nearby. Another is Teamly, which is designed to help you to focus on “getting the important things done.” With Teamly you can set important tasks as priorities for your day, and your week.

4. Schedule your day precisely.

Even though you get to work from home in your pajamas, if you so choose, doesn’t mean that you can start each day whenever you want. Go through your to-do list (see previous step) and jot down a specific time to get each task done. Allow time for a break or two, as well as lunch and any outside errands that must be done. You’ll find that sticking to your schedule helps you to be productive.  Using an app like Opus Domini helps by combining your calendar with your tasks. You can view your schedule for each day, or set it up so that you can see the entire month.

5. Set up specific times for meetings and business development.

In order to keep the work flowing and avoid having to take an hourly job outside of the office, make sure that you constantly have cases, clients or projects coming in. If you normally obtain your clients from networking events and meetings, set aside one day each week and set up as many meetings for that day as possible. If you prefer to connect with potential clients online, set aside couple hours a week specifically for that purpose. Great websites to check are oDesk, Elance, and, for UK/European freelancers, PeoplePerHour.

You’ll find that you can get a lot done each day simply by following these steps. You won’t need to have anyone standing behind you threatening you with bodily harm to stay on task, or to lock yourself into a room with only a computer in order to be a productive freelancer.

 

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