The Best Tricks to Stay Organized When Working from Home

Are You Feeling Disorganized Working from home? Let me help!

Don’t get me wrong, we all know that working from home can be positively life-changing! You hear stories all the time of people who begin working from home and suddenly, they’re able to work less hours, spend more time with their families, travel more and still have extra time to take the dog for a run! Unfortunately, this does not come easy! These people must be extremely organized to ensure that the transition to working at home comes smoothly.

If you are reading this, chances are you’re working from home and are starting to feel a little bit cluttered. As I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying, a cluttered brain translates to a cluttered brain. I couldn’t agree with this more and thankfully, throughout my time as a father who works from home, I’ve managed to come up with some pretty good organizational tactics to keep myself on top of everything in the most efficient and easy manner.

The biggest takeaway that you will get from this article is that no matter what your job is or who you are, staying organized while working from home is directly correlated to how well your workspace is organized, whether you have a consistent routine, if you are self-motivated and if you have the correct tools for success at your disposal. When combined, all these elements will give you a far greater chance at success while working from home so utilize every tool at your disposal that will be of benefit to you! The tool that’s helped me the most throughout my work from home career being a full time youtuber is TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy has been critical to the growth of my YouTube channel and I recommend it to anyone serious about making money on YouTube.

Try TubeBuddy free to see the features that will help grow your channel

Which jobs heavily rely on working from home?

There are so many jobs these days that can now work remotely, especially due to the pandemic. More and more companies are beginning to realize that perhaps remote work is the future. The remote jobs that I am most familiar with due to my own work include content creator, copywriter, marketing expert, virtual assistant etc.

I personally have a few blogs, a couple of virtual assistants, I am a full time Youtuber and father. Each of the jobs have been fulfilling and are great revenue streams for anyone wanting to work remotely. If you’re interested in learning more about this specific career path you can check out some other articles on the site to learn more:

Checkout my Income Reports to see how I make money each month
Learn how to publish a book and make thousands a month
Need to keep your day job and blog anonymously? Check out this post.
See how long it takes to get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube and how I grew a channel to 160,000+
Also check out this blog that tells you the ins and outs to making money on Youtube.
If you’re curious about all of the other ways to make passive income, check out the various ways you can make 5k/month or work from home ideas for stay at home dads.

You can also Click to reserve your spot at the FREE YouTube Quick-start Webinar! I’m sharing three strategies that helped me grow my YouTube channel and double my business income and I guarantee they WILL work for you. Seats are limited for the webinar so make sure you reserve yours.

Why is organization critical to work from home success?

Having a job that allows you to work remotely is incredibly rewarding if done correctly. In order to effectively work from home, you do need to maintain productivity to keep yourself motivated on your daily tasks. When working from an office, it’s easy to leave your home life at home and return to it at the end of the day. This is especially true if you have kids…. I would know. Unfortunately, the tricky part of working from home is finding that home and work balance since you will have 100 other things distracting you at home that you want to get done. Staying organized and setting rules/boundaries for yourself will help avoid slipping on your work and make for a more productive and valued employee.

Organizational tactics will not only allow you to stay focused in order to complete your work, but organization has also proven many other benefits for stay-at-home workers. Some of these benefits include:

Reduced stress levels

Don’t let something as simple as finding a document from five years ago stress you out. If you already have an organizational structure in place such as labelled filing cabinets, finding a document should be easy and quick, not time consuming and a source of stress.

Allows you to be on time

Do you find that you are always running late for meetings or events? This likely has to do with your organizational approach. Keep a calendar or day planner that you can fit in your bag or always have nearby. This will help a ton!

You might actually start meeting your deadlines!

Another benefit to keeping organized while working from home is that it will allow you to be far more efficient with your work! Due next week? If you’re organized, you can have it done in two days and then forget about it!

The best organizational tips EVER!

I’ve been working from home for enough years now that I think I’ve gotten a good handle on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to organizing your life as you work from home. So, if you’re looking for the best possible tips and tricks to staying organized while working remotely, you’ve certainly come to the right place! Keep on reading!

Tip #1: Find the perfect workspace for YOU.

This is an important one! Everyone is so different when it comes to what work from home style, they like best. Some people may love working out of an office at home where there is peace and quiet, or some people may like working in a coffee shop downtown surrounded by the hustle and bustle. Self-reflect or test out to figure out what works best for you. Figuring out in which environment you work best is critical to your work productivity and overall success.

So how do you know what the right workspace is for you? Easy! The right workspace for you is wherever you feel the most comfortable, the least distracted and the most motivated! Once you’ve figured out the location, organize that desired space to have everything you could possibly need. This will avoid you having to get up and go looking for an item while getting distracted on the way. Check out my work from home amazon must haves here!

Tip #2: Hire help for tasks that will ease up your workload (especially if you’re self-employed)

It’s so easy to lose track of time trying to complete mundane tasks that you don’t enjoy doing but absolutely need done. When you don’t enjoy the work, you’re doing it can also take way longer to complete and just put you in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Nobody wants that. I personally off load copyright work and occasionally editing work to virtual assistants that I find on Fiverr. Fiverr makes it easy to find virtual assistants from anywhere in the world that can complete work that you don’t want to do or don’t have time for. These virtual assistants are generally well priced and can get your task don’t quickly and efficiently. I highly recommend checking them out!

Get started on Fiverr today and finally get that project done!

Tip #3: Get into a consistent routine.

Creating a routine that you stick to consistently (yes this means everyday) will create familiarity and structure. Structure is the key to organizational success because it allows for you to wake up with a sense of order and knowing of what is going to go on in your day.

One of the best ways to create a routine is to wake up early so that you’re not feeling rushed to start your day. Some of the top CEOs in the world swear by waking up around 5am so that they can shower, eat breakfast, workout, read and meditate all before the rest of the world is up. This gives them a huge advantage to starting their day on a high note. If you can implement this one simple change, you should already be feeling a lot more organized before you even sit down at your desk.

Tip #4: Keep your desk organized.

Again, with the saying “cluttered workspace, cluttered brain.” Having a disorganized desk will cause you to feel incredibly stressed out and likely decrease your productivity. If you’re working from home and everything else around you is cluttered, the least you can do is maintain a neat and tidy desk. This will hopefully calm any anxieties or stressors you may have while working and keep you focused on your tasks.

I personally keep my desk very clear to avoid unnecessary clutter. The only things that I keep on my desk are my laptop, monitor, mouse, some pens and sticky notes. That’s all I really need. If you have desk drawers you can keep your other essential items such as stickies, notepads, books, files etc.

Tip #5: Stay Off social media.

Although social media may be useful for some aspects of your work, depending on your job it is likely doing more harm than good. As we all know, social media can be so addicting and if you’re not careful you can literally fall down the social media rabbit hole and not realize that hours are passing by. By the time you realize that you’ve wasted all that time you will begin feeling incredibly stressed out which will likely just lead to inefficiency.

One of my best tips for staying off of social media throughout your workday is to log out of all of your social media accounts before beginning your day. This way you will receive no notifications and you won’t receive that instant satisfaction the second you click on the app to see notifications or funny videos. It would take you time and effort to re-login. In the time it takes you to do this you will likely give up anyways and realize it’s not worth it. It’s generally only the very quick and instantaneous satisfaction we are going for. If we can’t see it in two seconds or less, it’s not worth waiting for.

If you’re looking for an alternative rather than logging out, on a lot of social media platforms there are options to set a time limit on how long you are allowed to spend on that app per day. If you exceed the limit you’ve set, the app will lock you out. Simple solution.

Tip #6: Create strict boundaries of when people can come into your office or workspace.

This tip is particularly important if you are working from home, and you have kids (or a partner). Sit down and talk to your family and let them know when it is and isn’t okay to barge into your office. So many people can get easily distracted by disruptions and completely lose their focus or train of thought. If this is you, then you know how incredibly frustrating this can be. Make it very clear to your family before you begin your workday that while you are working you should not be disrupted unless there is an emergency or urgent question. This will drastically improve your productivity and help you stay organized/on top of what you’ve planned to get done that day.

On the same note as this, you can also set “working hours” for yourself and tell this to your kids and/or partner. This way you do not overwork, and people will know when it’s okay to take your attention away from your work. This will also give kids the clear instruction that they need to understand when you are at work and when you are at home (even though you’re technically always at home)

Tip #7: Create a to-do list

This helps me stay on top of everything. Before I began writing things into a calendar and then creating a to-do list each day I was constantly missing appointments and meetings. It was embarrassing and I knew I needed a change because it began really stressing me out. If you’re like me and don’t like writing things down with pen and paper because you know you will lose it, you can purchase virtual calendars or just use google calendars to keep track of your days!

Read the Entire Work from Home Series

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