My Best Tips For Working From Home in Life, Thoughts on 02/21/18 I’ve had a lot of people ask me if I blog full time, and honestly, it kinda appears that I do; if you’ve ever watched my Insta Stories during the work week, then you’ll know that tend to be home at any given time. 11 am on a Tuesday? Yep, on my couch. 3 pm on a Thursday? Still just haaaaanging out. I swear I do stuff, guys!! I’ve made the occasional offhand comment about my work on Instagram, have a little blurb about it on my “About Me” page, but for the most part, my full time job isn’t something I’ve really delved into on The Blonde in Pink. And you know, I’m starting to think that maybe I should! I can only imagine that a large majority of you work a 9-5, maybe some of you are really just embarking on your careers, and I would love to be able to offer my perspective, talk about my experiences, and hopefully help some of my fellow working gals navigate the crazy world that is corporate America. But let me back it up. Because the opening paragraph of this post makes it look like I do umm, nothing. My technical job title is “Business & Integration Architecture Analyst,” and I work for one of the largest consulting firms in the world. There are a bunch of different sectors within my company, and I’m currently aligned to our Technology group (funny, considering I was an English major in college!). I interned with my company the summer going into my senior year of college, and started as a full time employee in July of 2016, after my graduation. A lot of consultants I know do extensive travel (often flying out to clients Monday through Thursday, every week), and will be assigned to projects that can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, and then move to something different— that’s pretty standard. I’m still not entirely sure why my experience has been anything but standard, but I’ve been on the same internal, virtual project since I started full time. What that means, is that my company is the client, we are working for ourselves essentially, and, all of the work for this project is done via Skype, emails, and the occasional workshop. I’m also now a year and a half into working on the same project (which is pretty crazy); I’ve switched teams once, and have been in a data conversion role for the last year and a bit. So, I’ve been working from home the whole time. What’s even stranger is that the summer I was an intern, I was staffed on ANOTHER “virtual” project. I had the coolest manager who was based out of San Francisco; she flew into Chicago a bunch of times and I met her in various cities a few times as well, but we would the majority of our communication over conference calls, Skyping, and email. You could say that once I inevitably need to go into an office 8 to 6 every day I’m #screwed, OR, you could say that I’m an expert at that #WFH (work from home) life. I’m a glass half full kinda girl, so I’m gonna roll with the upside of these facts, and share with you guys the best tips, tricks, and practices I’ve learned and developed over the years of working from home. Get your morning routine on LOCK I have a daily team call every day at 8 am, so I wake up, have my coffee, and give myself enough time to “get ready” for my day. It’s so tempting to sleep in until the last possible moment, but routine is everything for setting yourself up for a good day. Figure out where you do your best work and make that your “spot” Maybe it’s a coffeeshop, maybe it’s a conference room in your building, or like me, maybe you do your best work right on your couch! My apartment gets a ton of light, has these amazing floor to ceiling panoramic windows, and the couches are comfy AF, so yeeeep, that’s where you’ll find me. Limit your distractions This means leaving my phone in my bedroom when I work in the living room! No music, no TV in the background… Total silence (and my phone out of reach) is how I need things to be in order to get sh*t done! Make sure you’re always busy and have something to work on For me, this mean reaching out to people and asking “what can I do to help?” I’ve found myself in countless situations where I’ve been independently working on something for a couple weeks, and once it’s finished, I need to take the ownership of tracking down what my next “to do’s” are. Find out who your go to “help” people are It took me some time to figure this one out. My role has been extremely technical, and has required me to teach myself… essentially everything. This has led to many, many overwhelming fits of panic and stress, where I’ve had a deadline and literally not had the technical expertise or understanding to get it done in time. My teammates have been the biggest lifesavers with this! I’ve learned that whether you work from home or in an office, find out who on your team or within your company you can go to when you need help, have questions, need to have a one on one to learn how to do something, etc. Not everyone is a good contender for this, so part of the job is finding out who is great with helping/teaching/mentoring, and who normally has the capacity in their schedule to give you 20-30 min of their time every now and then. Get dressed, find your purpose in every day Because yeppppp, the struggle to put on pants every day is REAL. But it puts you in the right mindset to be productive and successful. Give yourself proper breaks So you don’t over work yourself OR never fully get into a work groove… Be disciplined and work hard and with intention. Give yourself a 15 min break every now and then and a proper lunch break like you would if you were in an office. Use your WFH advantage to eat super healthy and budget friendly during the week This is honestly my biggest secret for staying in shape! I normally have the same meals every day: spinach and banana smoothie for breakfast, and avocado toast and baby carrots for lunch. It’s so easy to eat healthy when you can casually cook or run down to a grocery store mid-day! Figure out how to best form relationships with your team/colleagues/managers In my situation, this has mainly been done through “pinging” (IMing) each other on Skype. Crazy, right? But that kind of constant, casual contact is how I’ve formed more personal relationships, been able to joke around, talk as if we were grabbing lunch in the office. If time management isn’t already your thing, you better make it your thing Pretty self-explanatory. From my experiences, there has been no hand holding, no checking in periodically; I need to manage how something gets done, and my timing for getting it done. Writing out a schedule if you have a big assignment to work on is always super helpful if this isn’t your strong suit! But yeah, it kinda has to be 🙂 Be creative when it comes to making (even finding) work friends Believe it or not, I actually have made a couple work friends through Instagram! Which is insane to me. Blog world and work world never ever cross over, but in a few instances… they have! So think outside the box. Also check and see if there are opportunities to get involved in your local office, or even volunteer events through your company where you can get face time with colleagues and meet some friends! Act as if you’re in an office I feel like most of the above point to this. Instill a little fear into yourself and pretend that your manager is always watching 🙂 Remember that you are your own best advocate This might be the biggest thing I’ve learned and lived through over the past year and half I’ve been working from home. There are some obvious upsides of getting work in a virtual environment, but also a TON of hindering factors that people in traditional office settings don’t need to worry about. You’re not spending all day every day with a team, talking about your personal lives on the reg, getting lunch and coffee, etc… It’s 99% allllll business. And for me, just one every day call. So, it can be really hard to distinguish yourself, show what business value you’ve brought to the table, even be on people’s radar at times… I’ve found that when it comes to promotional times, I need to be the one who does all the heavy lifting and makes a case for myself why I deserve to be moved up. You need to always be your own best cheerleader, and make sure you are always documenting what you have learned and accomplished— Because you’re the only one who actually sees the work you do!