Listen up all you newbie working-at-home bosses!
Working from home may have seemed like a dream when you first started out. But now that it’s a reality, you may find yourself struggling to get motivated or getting distracted by your third run through of Love is Blind.
I sat down with Lucas to pick his brain about how to create a work-at-home process that allows for more productivity and focus WITHOUT having to rely on that fleeting willpower.
For over 17 years Lucas led numerous operations teams on Wall Street in Mergers and Acquisitions. After establishing a consistent track record of successes, Lucas started his own consulting business and left his corporate job. As a consultant, he’s worked with some of the world’s strongest brands, including Wells Fargo, AIG, Bird, and the Pokemon company with whom he still works.
In early 2019, Lucas felt called to begin sharing his experience, approach, and learnings to a wider audience; this launched his Speaking and Business Mentoring. He’s had the wonderful opportunity since then to speak to numerous audiences in North America, Australia, and Europe, as well as partner both businesses and VCs for mentoring. His recent professional talks have addressed working from home, specifically: building the skills, routines, and toolsets into your day to create and sustain productivity in whatever you’re doing.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE
After a terrible run in with poison ivy, Lucas had no choice but to work from home while he recovered. Through this, he perfected his work from home productivity and is sharing all his secrets with us.
Willpower doesn’t exist
If you want to be good at something, you have to commit to building a routine that supports you being good at that thing. If you want to be productive working from home for eight hours a day, you need to build a routine into your life that supports being productive at a specific type of work.
How to build a routine
How do you personally build routines into your life that allow you to be successful and consistent in creating a productivity across long periods of time? Basically everyone needs this skillset. If you work from home, even if it’s not all the time, you need to have the skillset to be productive and not mess up that productivity.
Once a routine is built, you must spend your decision power on executing that routine. And then the routine will just carry you through the productivity that you need throughout the day. Lucas has some great examples of what a productive routine looks like when you are working from home (this starts at 12:36).
Take a lunch break
Even when you work at home, you should take a designated lunch break. This means taking a commute walk at the beginning and the end of your lunch break. Think about it. When you’re at your office job, you get up from your desk, you walk to a lunch spot and have lunch. You should do the same thing even at home.
Don’t eat at your desk. Keep your lunch separate from your work area.
Have a designated workspace
This space should be used for work and work only. If you need to use your computer for your monthly family group call, take the computer out of your workspace and use it elsewhere in the house.
Your body responds to routine and part of your routine is addressing your workspace. So if you sit down in your workspace to play games or watch cat videos, then every time you sit down at that desk, your body is going to expect that that’s part of what you do.
