How to Successfully Work from Home
Are you reading this during the “C” word virus psyop? Yes, all this is a psychological operation. It doesn’t mean it isn’t real, it means the solution to this problem is layers of control that will change our lives forever. Just like the Patriot Act after Amerithrax changed the world with homeland security and surveillance works.
Anyway, most of you will now be working from home for a short time. I’ve been doing this for 11 years and will show you how to make it successful.
If you have a home office or work from home regularly, then listen up. I’ve got some critical tips to make you a successful remote worker!
I’ve been a remote worker for 11 years and have been through the hoops. I know what works!
I started out working at various corporate headquarters. In 11 years, I worked for P&G in Cincinnati, Atrix Labs in Fort Collins, Perrigo in Allegan, and Herman Miller in Holland. I worked in offices, labs, and manufacturing plants.
5 years into my career, I was living with a friend who worked from home. We were living in a house in Colorado and his boss lived in Florida. This was back in 2000. I had never heard of anyone working from home. From that time on, I wanted to do whatever it took to work from home.
He got to chill all day at home, modify his environment for optimal health, and have far less stress.
Immediately I saw the benefits:
- Ability to Absolutely CONTROL my environment for health and comfort
- Ability to stay away from Office Politics
- No exposure to office viruses
- No Commute
- No Eating out, make meals at home
- Ultimate Primalhacked work environment
- Let the dog out at lunch
- Go for a walk around the neighborhood at lunch
- Home earlier (no commute) to see the kids after school
- Money saved on lunches and commuting
- Wear whatever you want ($ saved on work clothes)
- Get more sleep (no commute)
- More time for hobbies (no commute)
- Get more done (Less distractions)
I wanted a work from home job. But I had no idea how to get one. My friend was a computer programmer and ran a computer system remotely.
I was a chemical engineer developing pharmaceutical drugs and manufacturing processes. Not exactly the kind of thing you can do at home.
It took me until 2009 plus one massive career change to find a way to work from home.
If you want to work from home, you’re going to need to set up some very consistent systems and practices to make you successful.
You want to be more productive while still having time to do the laundry, make a meal, and get in a workout.
Working from home seems like a great way to get a lot of work done without the distractions of workplace gossip and coworker sniping you for a “quick” conversation.
Rarely does this work out the way it was planned and most remote workers end up right back at corporate headquarters sitting in a soup of Wifry, gossip, and mauve cubicles.
Don’t be that person!
Most people who start working from home find themselves distracted. One minute you are answering emails and the next minute you’re in front of the TV playing video games. Poof – there goes any productivity for the day.
1. Find a Way to Work Remote
Working in a modern office means Wifry soup, cellphones in everyone’s pocket, toxic water, toxic emissions from building products, and stressful commutes. The EMF environment in modern workplaces is not set up for health, it’s set up to bleed your productive years out of you and then let you go.
There are many ways to set up a work from home assignment. You can negotiate to work from home every other Friday as a start and that’s what I did. I started out asking for every other Friday to be a work from home day. It worked so well, we went to every Friday was work from home for the whole team.
Tim Ferriss has the best book on how to set this up in your own life. Check his book out and find your path.
I had to quit my pharmaceutical job and take a paycut to work in a more life sustaining job and one that was suited to working form home.
In my 11 years working from home, I don’t regret my decision and it’s led me to be healthier and happier.
Be accountable, get your work done, and stay connected when you’re home.
2. Create an Office
When you work from home usually you work from the kitchen table. There are just too many distractions for most people to be productive. You likely don’t have necessary work tools, an ergonomic chair, and will get distracted with chores and cleaning.
Make a specific place in your house business only. You don’t want to associate your dining room or kitchen with work. These are places to connect with food and family.
I started out in a specific corner of my living room. I set up a desk, chair, and all necessary cords and tools I needed in one spot.
Having a specific office location will help you get focused and keep the energetics of work in one place in your home.
If you have the ability, set an entire room up as your home office. This allows others to see this as your work space and be more respectful of walking in on important meetings and disturbing you.
I now have an entire room as my office, with dual monitors, a docking station, red lights for health, a sit stand desk, an ergonomic chair, and all my work tools. When I get into that office I focus on work.
Make a work space and set it up for optimal focus.
3. Check in
Check in with coworkers and your boss often. Many people will think you spend all day in your PJs eating ice cream and watching Netflix.
Check in often with coworkers to let them know you’re working and keep track of your daily work for a while to share with you boss. This way you can document that you are in fact productive and working.
When I first set up my work from home assignment, it was a 6 month trial. My boss actually set up a laptop at work on my old desk, and asked me to be on video all day long so it would be projected onto the computer at work on my old desk. That way everyone could see I was at work and not forget about me. Luckily we didn’t do that, as it would have felt too much like surveillance.
I did however, keep a daily log of what I worked on and was able to show that to my boss whenever he asked what I was working on.
Another issue I had is whenever I left my computer to use the bathroom, someone would inevitably call me and wonder why I wasn’t at my desk. You just have to work through these issues and know that it’s OK to take bathroom and refreshment breaks.
Whenever I made the trip back to corporate headquarters, I scheduled 3-4 meetings with others that I hadn’t’ met before. These were just coffee meetings to get to know what they did for the company and make sure people knew who I was since I was not present at headquarters every day. This helped out immensely.
Do your best to help everyone at work be comfortable with your new work arrangements.
4. Wear Clothes
Yes, this has to be said. How many times have I woken up at 630am and realized I had a meeting that started….at 6:30am!! I work on East coast time and live in Central time. SO I run downstairs in my underwear. Remember, when you work from home, it’s a good idea to be on video in your meetings to stay connected and see facial reactions and more. At the very least, wear a nice top, that’s all people see. People think, perceive, true or not, that you are working if you wear work like clothes. Just do this regardless, because many people see you in a t shirt or shorts and then get jealous and unconsciously subvert your ability to stay working from home. Perception is everything!
5. Phone a Friend
Make sure to have at least one good friend at work. Someone you can call and get the latest news. If you are completely out of touch you will quickly be obsolete. Stay up to date on what’s going on at the company. This isn’t gossip, but learning about new corporate initiatives, layoffs, acquisitions etc.. and just connecting with someone back at the office. More friends would be better, but at least one person should be your lifeline to the office.
6. Get Light Right
You are finally out from under the life destroying fluorescent lights. YES! Fluorescent and LED lights as manufactured today are destroying your health and your mind! You are being farmed of your productivity and then thrown away. We could have made office lighting healthful, but we didn’t.
Don’t recreate the corporate office back home! Get lighting that rebuilds your health! The #1 best thing you can do is work outside. Grab a 50 foot LAN cable and take your laptop outside (LINK to cable).
I do this every single day in the summer and fall. Open a window in the winter when possible.
When inside, use biologically appropriate lighting. This SaunaSpace Light gives off red and infrared light. Two healing rays of light that are completely absent in corporate workplaces. You get so much blue light from your monitor, smartphone and other devices, don’t add more from your room lighting.
Use red lights all over. I use Gembared (Discount code SLEEP) and SaunaSpace Lighting in my home when it’s dark.
If you need to see color, use incandescent lights with no coatings on them.
Light is truly THE most important health Hack you can build into your home office that you can’t do at the corporate office.
The right light minimizes migraines, eye strain, fatigue and more.
You can add Iris as a screen protector app to reduce blue light.
7. Open a Window
First, if you’re working from home, for goodness sake, get a spot near a window!
Studies show windows and nature reduce stress and increase happiness.
Plus the light is more healing in front of a window, and hopefully you can even open your window, unlike at corporate, and let in the fresh air and natural light. An open window lets in healthier light than a closed window, yes it makes a big difference.
A closed window blocks ultraviolet light and most of the red and infrared light but lets in all the blue light, which is what’s already getting into your brain, eye and body from the laptop, phone etc.. So open the window anytime you want.
8. Minimize distractions
Create working hours and practice holding yourself accountable.
Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, video games, kids and more. You’ll want to break away from work you find boring, or to tackle piles of laundry so you don’t have to do it later.
Don’t let the distractions take you away from being productive.
This works better when you love the work you’re doing. If you are involved in soulless work, distractions come easily and often.
It’s easiest for me to put on headphones and use binaural beats (Brain.FM) to keep me on task and not so distracted.
I block out my calendar at noon to eat lunch and get in a workout.
If you don’t schedule this, I find that someone schedules meetings for me all day with not one break.
Schedule breaks and use that time to do chores and a workout.
You can eat lunch at your desk because it’s like eating with friends more than eating alone.. sometimes. Eating alone isn’t always ideal.
Some of you will have to leave the house and work at the coffee shop or library, both have free internet, in order to avoid the distractions of home.
I find I get distracted way more when I’m doing tasks I find boring.
Sad to say most of us work in jobs that are meaningless. This is by design!
9. Take Breaks
People at corporate have to travel farther to the bathroom, to get coffee or tea, water, and lunch, and for meetings. People in the office talk to each other and gossip and walk to meetings and their cars and travel between buildings.
You too should take mini breaks. THIS is the time to do some laundry, call a friend at work, make up some tea, or go outside and soak up some sun.
I take a sun break at dawn every single morning. I also take breaks to grab tea and coffee.
If I’m in meetings all day long, I usually won’t move much at all. This is not ideal!
When you work from home you end up sitting in the same chair all day long for many hours, one meeting after another. I have to tell my coworkers I’m going to take a 5 minute break to go to the bathroom and grab some tea. Sometimes I just take a walk around the outside of my house.
Sometimes, I take my phone and put on my earbuds, put my phone in my backpack, and take my phone calls on a walk.
This is necessary. Don’t get in the habit of sitting in the same place all day long.
Do some light stretching, take a proper lunch break, and peel away from the computer throughout the day.
When I was really into working out, I kept a kettlebell at my desk and alternated pushups, pull ups, squats, and kettlebell swings all day.
10. MOVE
When you don’t have to park a car and walk to the front door of the office, head down the hall for a meeting, or walk upstairs to the bathroom you don’t move much. You could sit in front of your laptop all day long and still be in every single meeting and get meals, assuming they are already at your desk. All this means you have the opportunity to move far less than usual. Don’t become sedentary!
Get up and take dinner out of the freezer. Get outside at sunrise and do some light exercise or take a walk. Take a walk or get in a workout at lunch.
I get outside every single day at sunrise.
At lunch I go for a workout, take a walk, or go XC skiing. In 45 minutes I have done my exercise for the day and I’m back at my desk eating my lunch.
I also have a standing desk and a stool height Aeron chair. This way I can alternate sitting and standing throughout the day.
Put your phone on speaker and do some pushups, stretching, or go for a walk during your meeting.
11. Set Office Hours
Don’t let family, friends, and kids intrude on this time. You would normally be at work.
It’s great that you are home and can see your family more, but ensure there are clear boundaries.
Constant interruption makes it impossible to get anything done.
If you have kids at home, do your best to get 20-40 minutes of focused work in before you are interrupted.
12. Hard Wire Your Office
This is so important and yet most people will ignore this. Don’t!
You just left the toxic soup of Wifry back at the office. Don’t stand next to the wifi router at home all day long.
WIFI and EMF reduces immunity and harms your body. Just because it’s everywhere at work and coffee shops and schools doesn’t mean it’s safe! It isn’t.
Turn off the wifi and connect up some LAN lines to your cellphone and laptop. These are faster than wifi and won’t bombard your body with microwaves all day long. HERE’s our article on how to do this from home, and a video about how to set up your home on LAN lines.
Conclusion
Setup an office space. Get appropriate lights and hard connect everything. Turn off your WiFi.
