Setting up Your Home Office for Success
Setting up Your Home Office for Success
By Samantha Garner, GoForth Institute
Working from home is a rewarding, often quite personal, decision. It has many perks, including zero commute time, reduced carbon emissions, lower expenses associated with employment and greater contribution to a strong work/life balance. Start off on the right foot and set up your home office the right way.
Is a home office necessary?
There’s no rule that says you must sit on an office chair and in front of a desk to do productive work. However, a home office can set the tone for your home-based business. If you spend your days working on the couch while the TV drones on in the background, you might find you aren’t as productive as you intend to be – and what if a client wants to drop by? A home office can set you up for productivity and success.
Carve out a dedicated working space
Many novelists reminisce about their early days of writing in humble locations: laundry rooms, kitchen tables, fire escapes. This basic principle shouldn’t be lost on entrepreneurs. Even if you don’t have the physical space for a traditional desk and chair, dedicate an area for your small business work – and that work alone. For this reason, your bed and your couch may not be ideal environments. Find an area where you can shut out distraction as much as possible and be comfortable.
Keep your home office organized
In an ideal world, you would have desk drawers and filing cabinets with neatly labelled files you can always count on to have what you need. However, the world of entrepreneurship isn’t always ideal, so make do with what you have. Make sure all your most important items – pens, notepaper, telephone – are within arm’s reach. Keep client files organized alphabetically and located in an easy-to-access location. Many office organizers advocate the use of separate files for urgent items, “to review” items and “to file” items. Find a system that works for you and stick to it.
Clean out your office regularly
If you’re never going to attend that networking event or you stopped working for Sparkle Dry Cleaning eight months ago, don’t sacrifice your valuable office space. File items and go through your inbox regularly. Here’s a tip many entrepreneurs like: Keep the contents of your email inbox free of all emails except ones you need to reference immediately or respond to right away. Create subfolders in your inbox for emails you can’t delete, but don’t need to see every day. This way, you won’t be overwhelmed by items that don’t actually need your attention.
Create a schedule
You operate your business from home because you hate commuting, want to be kinder to the environment or want to be closer to your family. However, you may have noticed the effect that the absence of colleagues and a boss has had on your productivity. Resist the urge to procrastinate. Create a schedule for your work and display it somewhere where you can’t help but see it. This vital component of your home office will help you stay on track, hold yourself accountable and keep productive.
Consider meeting space
Some entrepreneurs who work from home rarely hold meet with clients. Others are always running to and from meetings. Honestly assess your requirements for client meetings and how well you can meet these requirements. Certain types of businesses require more formal meeting space – imagine a meeting with a notary public compared to a meeting with a graphic designer – and in these cases, you may consider a more traditional home office setup. If you will only hold meetings occasionally or can’t set up a meeting space that fills your requirements, investigate your town’s publicly available meeting spaces. Businesses such as coworking spaces, libraries, and community centres often make meeting rooms available for rent by entrepreneurs just like you.
Samantha Garner is GoForth Institute's Director, Communications. Contact Samantha by email: samantha@goforthinstitute.com
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