Allan Bukusi: How to Work from Home; Tips from a Grandmaster!

How to Work from Home;Tips from the Grandmaster!

For some, the opportunity to work from home is exciting because it sounds like you can get more time to spend with the family. But your food budget is likely to go up because you are working next to the fridge. The only real benefit of working at home is that you cut out transport costs, because your employer is going to expect the same amount of work to be done. For some the prospect of working at home is a distraction. They find it hard to concentrate when they are in their comfort zone where all their earthly "les enjoyables" are at hand. However, there are some who have never tried it and don’t know how to go about it. This article is for you.

In order to work effectively at home, you need to develop four qualities; personal discipline, generativity, production and a profit orientation. These four competencies will enable you to work independently, manage your work and maximize your output. Indeed, if you master these competencies you will be able to run your own business. These are the same skills entrepreneurs learn in order to make the best use of their time to earn the most profit.

Discipline is about setting aside a time, space and place to engage in strictly work-related activity. This may be achieved by setting aside a desk and agreeing with your “roommates” to leave you alone to work. You may also need to agree on space allocation and zoning areas where you keep your work-related materials. This will ensure you don’t find your documents stashed behind the sofa or under the kitchen sink. If you are lucky you can have a room to yourself. However, having a room to yourself does not make you work. The discipline is from within. Working alone is a test to find out if you are one of those people who cannot work without supervision. Without a supervisor to drive you and a distant deadline to meet can be a "freedom nightmare”. You may be found dead on the line after pushing yourself to work at the last minute. Some people say they work best under pressure, but think about how much more of a quality product you could produce with a little planning and scheduling of your time.

The second skill you must master is generativity. Generativity is more than just being busy. It means that you can creatively add value to a situation, circumstance using your gifting or professional skill set. For example, if you are an accountant and someone gives you a bunch of receipts and invoices, you should be able to “generate” an income-expense report. If you are an artist in front of a canvas, at the end of the day, there should be an artistic drawing on the board. Note that it is possible to have the time an tools, but not be able to generate anything of value. Working at home presumes that you have the capacity to think for yourself, work without supervision and generate solutions to the assignment you have been given.

The third skill is production. This is not the same as generativity. Though the two are related, production is more of personal organization and management. It involves planning, programming and processing your work to produce a product against a schedule. Let me give you an example. Perhaps you have had the unpleasant experience of working with a person told you, “I am just about to finish it”, every day for two weeks. This frustrating experience rendered you unable to plan your next move regarding the project until they actually completed the work. You had no idea whether the person was at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the assignment. On the contrary, A person with production skills will tell you, “I am at stage 3 of the project and I need another day to complete steps 4 and 5”. You can trust that person because they are working to a schedule and they also have a good understanding of the tangibles that need to be produced. Indeed, you will not call that person until the time they requested has elapsed.

Fourth, you need to be profit centred or profit oriented. Think of it this way; if you are being paid to do a day’s work, why do you want to waste a week on it? You are not only wasting your employers time, but your own time as well. Why do you want to take a long time to earn a fixed amount of money? Just spend the needed time to get the payment. Another way of thinking about a profit mindset is to think of yourself as a business that needs to give you a return on your investment. In this way you will equate your engagement in an assignment with how much profit you earn. If you learn this secret, you will be able to prioritize your work, but also keep an eye on your profitability and get the most out of your day every day. By doing so you will learn “enterprise” and motivate yourself to get the most out of your career.

Finally, if you really cannot work at home, perhaps you could find a dedicated place in the neighborhood and hire a “work-station” for the day. There is great power in developing the ability to manage your own output and eventually controlling how much you earn. Get many more tips on how to prosper in employment from this app.