working from home

Remotely Helpful, Part 3: Buddies & Boundaries

Kate Sloan

I’m back with more tips for working from home! These final 3 are crucial (but, frankly, all of them have been)…

#7: Find ways to combat loneliness.

Working from home is lonely as hell sometimes! Mostly I am okay with this, since I am super introverted and work best with minimal distractions (I still have nightmarish flashbacks to the office I once worked in that was filled with women in their early twenties constantly arguing about sex and dating). However, sometimes all that solitude is bad for morale! This is typically when I head out to a café (as discussed in my last post), text a friend for a mid-day chat, or schedule a co-working date with a pal if possible.

The most common way I deal with loneliness on the job, though, is social media. Twitter, Slack, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit: these services are often decried by productivity nerds for sucking up precious time and energy throughout the day, but used judiciously, I think they can be a godsend for lonesome freelancers. Where else could I gather on-the-fly opinions from my readers on stuff I’m working on, advice from fellow writers on methods and word choice, and terrible puns from sex-blogger pals across the globe?!

#8: Protect your time fiercely.

In my experience, if someone knows you work from home/are a freelancer, they’ll often assume that means you can do whatever you want whenever you want, deadlines be damned. I don’t know why they think this. It is annoying as fuck. Like, yes, I could step away from my computer for 2 hours on a Thursday afternoon to go see a movie with my mom or go shopping with a friend, and I appreciate offers to do so, but I don’t appreciate when those offers turn into pressure! This is even more aggravating when friends or family members see that you’re working but behave as though you’re playing a computer game or something – like they can interrupt you and distract you willy-nilly, because what you’re doing couldn’t possibly be real work, right?!

Now that I’ve gotten that rant off my chest… Being able to protect your time is really important as a freelancer. When a friend would ask me to hang out or do something for them, I used to say, “Sure, I’m free all day!” because that was technically true – my entire day was theoretically flexible and each item on my schedule was moveable. But nowadays, I’m more comfortable saying, “I’m free between [this time] and [that time],” or “I actually can’t, I have a deadline coming up, but maybe next week?” I’ve also gotten better at saying to people when they’ve interrupted me – in the politest way I can – “I have to get back to work now,” which elicits a surprised expression more often than you might expect. (Do these people… not know freelancing is work?!) This type of boundary-setting is mandatory for me if I’m going to get anything done ever.

#9: …but don’t forget to take breaks!

Trust me, your brainpower will eventually fizzle if you don’t give yourself enough downtime, and that type of burnout is really inconvenient when there’s a deadline around the corner! I understand the productivity-frenzied frustration of taking a break when you feel like you “have to” keep working – even if you’ve been working all day – but the “rest” part of the work cycle is truly just as important as the “work” part. Don’t lose sight of that!

I sometimes schedule things for myself specifically to force myself to take breaks – like buying a theatre ticket for a Friday night at the end of a busy week, or making plans to chat with a friend at a certain time so I have to get everything done by then and set aside my work for the day. I also like to use mid-day errands as a reminder to “switch off”: trips to the bank or the grocery store are restful compared to being hunched over a laptop, and I always listen to podcasts or music on my way to and from these places so my brain gets a little shake-up.

 

What are your top tips for working from home?

Remotely Helpful, Part 2: Locations & Logistics

Kate Sloan

Here’s part 2 of my 3-part series on working from home! I’ve got some more tips for you today…

#4: Mix up your location from time to time.

I know in my last post I proselytized the joys of having a functional at-home workspace, and that’s still important, but I nonetheless can’t imagine always writing at my desk at home. Eventually I always get bored and/or lose motivation. That’s when I know I need to shake up my location.

Coffee shops and libraries are great for this, and are staples for many writers – for actual scientifically-backed reasons, in some cases! If you know of a bar that’s chill about people bringing their laptops, that’s nice too (Northwood early on a weeknight is my Platonic ideal of a relaxed writing spot). I’ve known writers who loved to write in mall food courts, public parks, or subway trains. Just make sure that if you go somewhere with no WiFi (or with dicey WiFi), you prepare in advance any research materials you’ll need, so your work won’t be stymied by the lack of connectivity.

Of course, co-working spaces are also an option, but most freelancers I know don’t make enough money to be able to justify the expense. (For example, the Toronto Writers’ Centre charges $135/month, and Lemonade – Toronto’s answer to The Wing – charges $300-500/month. There are cheaper spots but all of them cost more than I’d ideally like to pay.) To approximate the co-working experience in a lower-budget way, you could head over to a friend’s house and work alongside them – just make sure to extend them the same courtesy another time, and bring snacks or coffee or something to express your appreciation for their generosity with their space!

#5: Give yourself structure.

This is probably the hardest part of working from home, and also the most important. Without a boss breathing down your neck, it’s easy to lose track of time and accidentally spend an hour scrolling through tweets on your phone or falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole instead of doing your actual work.

The most beneficial thing for me in this regard is also very basic: a to-do list. The psychological pleasure I get when I tick an item off the list – or, better yet, when I tick all the items off the list – is a powerful motivator. This is doubly true because my partner has access to my digital to-do list and can check on my progress throughout the day. Having an “accountability buddy” can be a big help!

Some writers have strict daily schedules that they stick to. My work is too sporadic to be able to commit to something that stable, but if it works for you, do it! I also know lots of writers who use task management tools like Trello, Asana, and Teamwork – the latter of which I use at my dayjob and enjoy, because it allows me to track the amount of time I spend on each task so I’m more aware of my own time-wasting/procrastination tactics as they’re happening.

#6: Pay attention to your natural rhythms and arrange your work accordingly.

For example, here are some things I’ve learned about my own rhythms:

  • With very few exceptions, I am not very creative before 11 a.m., so mornings are best spent on more rote or administrative work (e.g. answering emails, scheduling tweets).
  • I am pretty useless for at least a day after arriving home from traveling, so I do my best to ensure I have no deadlines during that window, or that if I do have one, I complete the work in advance.
  • Nights aren’t usually very creative for me, unless I give myself a second wind with caffeine (which peps me up) or alcohol (which opens my mind to making more freeform connections).
  • If I’m really, really into a piece of writing – I’m talkin’ flow-state, “don’t talk to me, I’m working” levels of absorption – I should keep working until that feeling dissipates, if possible, because that’s often when my best writing happens.

Work in our society is largely structured around the idea that you should work at appointed hours all the time even if you don’t feel like it, which – setting aside the hellish capitalistic labor-fervor involved in that idea – just isn’t really in line with how the human mind functions. Freelancers (sometimes) have the luxury of being able to follow our own natural creative rhythms and take advantage of their gifts; this is one of my favorite things about my job(s)!

 

More tips to come later this week! Have you found any of these principles helpful in the past?

Remotely Helpful, Part 1: Flexible & Delightful

Kate Sloan

This is Remotely Helpful, a new mini series of blog posts where I’m writing up my best tips for working from home, ascertained from years and years of it! Here are my first 3 major suggestions…

#1: Take advantage of your flexible schedule.

Granted, depending on your exact work logistics, your schedule may not actually be as flexible as people tend to assume it is. (I have to get up at 9 every weekday for my dayjob, for example.) But if you do get to set your own hours, at least some of the time, I would strongly recommend making the most of that good fortune!

I love being able to do my laundry at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday when no one else is using the machines, or trotting down to my local movie theatre to take in a weekday matinee when my brain needs a break. I love finishing tomorrow morning’s work early so I can go see a comedy show tonight. I love making time to see a friend for coffee on a Thursday afternoon. I love that if I have an unmissable doctor’s appointment or international flight in the middle of the workday, I usually don’t have to ask anyone’s permission or move anything around, so long as I get the work done at some point.

In the capitalist hellscape that is our society, too often we’re trained to always be thinking about work, and to arrange our entire lives around our work. That’s bullshit, and not even compatible with keeping your brain in top-notch working order. If you have the freedom to do otherwise, you may as well!

#2: Putting effort into your aesthetic makes it easier to put effort into your work.

This isn’t true for everyone, but it is certainly true for me: if I take a shower, get dressed, and put makeup on, I will be plenty more productive than I would if I just lazed around in sweatpants all day. True, working in pajamas is one of the great joys of working from home, but if you find it makes your work ethic worse, it might not be worth it! (I am admittedly naked and wrapped in a bath towel right now as I write this, though, so… do as I say, not as I do.)

Some life hacks I’ve found for this: super stretchy jeans look like “real clothes” but can feel like pajama pants, lipstick makes me feel way more pulled together than I actually am, and nice loungewear is a step up from ratty pajama pants for days when I really can’t manage an outdoors-appropriate outfit.

#3: Your space should be as functional and pretty as you can make it.

For years, I found myself going to cafés to work almost all the time, and I eventually realized part of my reason for doing this: my workspace at home just wasn’t very inviting! It was dark and messy and boring. In the years since, I’ve become more stringent about keeping my workspace clean, and have spruced it up with additions like scented candles, inspiring photographs, and visually interesting knickknacks. One side of my desk is more podcast-focused (mic, pop filter, headphones, pencil and notepad for jotting things down during recordings) while the other side is more writing-focused (pens and pencils, research materials) so I can keep my head in the game. Inside my desk drawers are notebooks, more pens and pencils, and snacks to keep me going.

Other things that might work well in a freelancer’s workspace: good speakers, indoor plants, cable organizers, an ergonomic chair, an external monitor, and a timer (for using the Pomodoro technique or similar). A collection of reference books is also a must – I have journalism style guides within close reach, a whole bunch of sex books, and a stack of my old journals for when I plumb my sexual history to research a piece.

 

More tips to come! What’s your best working-from-home advice?