Love Your Home Office
1:47 Minute Read.
It all starts with your home office.
Smarter agents develop peak performance skills and add more flexibility into their lives. The rest just hang around the office cooler and follow the herd. Old school brokers still promote office space, water coolers and floor-time. But, hanging around lack-luster competitors throughout your day will never transform you into a top agent.
“Focus your career on flexibility and fulfillment.”
Here are 10 great commandments for successfully working from home:
Develop a set schedule. Keep a schedule for work-timeand home-time and don’t let one intrude on the other. Separating business from pleasure will keep you focused and everyone in your home will be happier. Also, it’s easy for friends to infringe on your flexibility. They forget the “employed” part of “self-employed.” Plan your business goals, home tasks and social meetings in advance to stay productive in all areas of life.
Earn flexibility. Once you’ve completed your daily tasks, reward yourself with some flexibility in your day – it’s the one true benefit of not clocking-in at an office.
Prioritize your clients by their needs, not their demands. All clients are not equal. Some clients clamor for attention and expect you to be available 24/7. Keep certain time slots for listing and showing homes and train clients to fall into that schedule. You can always adjust as needed. Read our post How to Quickly Qualify Buyers to learn how to prioritize clients.
Get dressed. Research shows that what we wear affects our frame of mind. Show up at your home office dressed and ready to work at your scheduled time.
Dress your office too. Not only do your clothes affect your frame of mind, so do your surroundings. Set aside a dedicated place for work. Make sure all your files and supplies are nearby and organized. And make it comfortable and stylish too. (TAX NOTE: Having a separate, dedicated home office space can be helpful at tax time.)
Set up your computer so you don’t waste time on the Internet. Even office-dwellers waste time at their desk checking personal email and surfing the web.
Master the cloud. Become friends with Dropbox, Evernote, Dotloop and other cloud services. It makes working remotely a breeze.
Change your venue every now and then. Most prefer to work at their desk. However, every now and then change it up by working at a coffee shop or the lake – just to remind yourself that you can.
Clock-out. One pitfall of working from home is there is no set quitting time. There will always be another email in your inbox. In your imagination, turn the “OPEN” OFF and walk away.
Get social. Never allow yourself to become isolated in your home office. Get out. Get coffee. Get lunch. Spend time with friends. In fact, the envy they will feel for your independence will be a continuing source of motivation!
