- Excitement: When you first start working from home, you think you’ll get the same amount of work done from home and still be able to spend more time with your family and maybe even on other interests that you have.
- Laziness: You feel like you’ve earned a break and because you are working from home, you have the luxury to be a little lazy
- Panic: While you are feeling lazy, your to-dos pile up, and you end up panicking because you are not sure how to handle everything now.
- Back on track: You realize that panicking won’t help you, and you should actually get the work done. You pull yourself together and try to be the most productive version of yourself.
But even if you’ve gone through all of these stages, you can’t be certain that at the final stage, you will be able to get back on track. Here are some tips to make sure you get back on track successfully and run your store the way you would run it from the office.
Identify the biggest distractions
If you’ve gone through these stages, you probably already know what the biggest distractions for you are. If you are still not sure what those are, go through a little identification period, then think of ways to eliminate those distractions from your working environment.
For example, if you have other family members living with you and the noise from other rooms distracts you, then try using music to set the mood for yourself. If you are the type of person, who is comfortable working at a coffee shop or a cafe, you can try using a coffee shop ambiance recording from YouTube. I know this works for a lot of people, maybe it will work for you too.
Get ready and organize
Organizing and prioritizing doesn’t only refer to your schedule, but also your environment. Having a separate space to work when you are home will help a lot. If you don’t have a separate room to dedicate to your work, it can be a desk or any other table that you use only for work. This will help your mind understand that you can’t do anything else but work at that specific place.
As for the scheduling, you can use the bullet journal technique that I’ve recently discovered. Turns out, it’s much more helpful than a single to-do list or a daily task journal.
Know your store’s peak times and schedule accordingly
Depending on the market you are working with, there are certain hours in a day that are busier with customer requests, questions, or simply to do items that are time-bound.
If you identify those peak times for your store, you will be able to plan ahead and be more productive.
Automate certain tasks
Automation is always important, and more so when working from home. This will help you decrease the number of tasks you have to do and leave you with more time to spend with your family.
If you are not yet doing this, there are a number of things you can automate, such as accounting, returns and refunds, repricing, payment approvals, etc.
For each of these, there are many tools you can use to get started. For example, you can use StreetPricer for repricing; you can get started with a free account to see it’s the right fit for you and continue with more features later if you wish to.
Wrapping up
So this is it, some tips that you can use to get more productive in running your store from home during these challenging times. I hope this will be helpful and will make your life a little easier.
