I see a lot of misconceptions about working from home. Many people (my older brother is a prime example) think that what happens is we barely meet ends meet, but it’s ok because we can get up at 11:00, put in a few hours of work, then spend the day doing whatever we want.

For most people who work at home I guarantee you that they work more than 8 hours a day and it is much harder than it looks. I’ll post about this separately, but for now, here are 5 good tips to make working from home actually work for you.

Create a work routine

This may be an essential factor for success, so despite the relative freedom you have, I suggest settling into some routine or another. Staying at home does give you the option to sleep an hour extra if you really want to, but most people become efficient with regularity, so I would create a pretty stable schedule if I were you. For me working from 7:00 - 13:00 and then from 17:00 -  21:00 works best, somehow I am utterly useless from lunchtime for a good 4 hours. If you’ve been struggling to get enough done, this is a must do, at least until you get your workload into shape.

The net will still be here tomorrow

A lot of people, especially bloggers think they have to be alert at all times. Riding a new story as it comes is their biggest concern, so they can drag in all those new visitors. First of all, being 24 hours late will not make a difference. If it does make a difference you have a blog like Lifehacker, which means you can afford to have people to do this for you. Always remember that it’s not just when you cover something, but also, how. Try and find unique angles at looking at things, write quality content. People won’t give a shoot if you cover something a bit later, I know I don’t.

Find the tools for your work

Whatever you’re doing there are tools to do it better. Unless you’ve spent days and days looking for the best one I’m telling you, there’s a better one for you. I spend ages, and I mean weeks, searching for an application to manage my documents, tasks and so on all in one place. I found the tool for me about 2 weeks ago, after about a year of searching.

All in all, spend 2 hours every week to perfect your trade and the tools you use. Learn some keyboard shortcuts, look through the program options, perhaps there’s something you can use, read documentation and so on. If you learn 2 new things every week, that’s 104 tricks per year, eventually you’ll be a fine tuned system working “for you”, making you 100% faster, meaning you’ll earn the same amount faster. You can spend the rest of your time working some more, or watching Star Trek (no other options).

It sounds a bit contradictory, but I’ve found that working hard might clear your mind better than a movie, a short nap, or anything else might. Especially if you enjoy your work you can become so absorbed that you forget everything else, which may do a world of good for your head.

The point of trying to work to clear you mind is not the same as when you clear your head with rest. The reason we do the later is to actually be able to rest. The point of the former is simply to clear our heads, to get away from the thousands of things running around in our head, our ideas, our problems, our tasks and so on.

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I hear it time and time again, patience is a virtue. Is it? I mean I can clearly see why in some cases this may apply, but some of the best decisions of my life were bought on the spot, or without thinking. In many of these cases some risk was involved, but not always. I’ll grant you that probably some of my worst decisions were also made because I don’t have too much patience, but there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. All in all, I would modify the saying to “It is a virtue to know when to be patient”.

I decided to explore the nature of patience a bit more, when you should be patient, when you shouldn’t, when it’s advisable, and when perhaps a little hot headed decision making does a world of good. Keep in mind that whatever you read here should be applied to yourself, don’t try to follow others to the letter. Being somewhat impatient has worked for me, but may be a bad move for you.

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We all know that our working environment affects our productivity, depending on the actual individual this can be quite extreme. For example, I can work at least 20% better and faster if the room I am in is totally clean, I can listen to soothing music, and get some insence going somewhere.

It’s not by chance that CEO-s and other high up managers have so individual looking rooms sometimes. Take a look at the Google HQ, where they embrace different workspaces, they don’t go for the cloned cubicle look. This is because they know that you are in your most productive state when you work in an environment best suited to you. Let me show you a few tips and tricks I use to give myself the boost I need, turn the page to see.

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I know a lot of people who read a load of productivity blogs, but they aren’t really productive, and organized. They want to be, but they start out with a method they read about, fail with it, and move on to the next. While it is obviously not a good idea to change methods after an initial failure, the real reason for the many long faces I see regarding all the productivity tips out there is not this.

The real reason behind people not being able to force productivity on themselves is much-much deeper. For this I will need to go deep into what I think productivity is and how you can achieve it. Read on to see what I think about the whole issue in general, and how you can learn to be more efficient and productive on your own (am I cutting out my own audience here? Oh well, as long as you become productive!)

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Whenever you work, chances are you need to concentrate to get the job done as best as possible. However our minds aren’t really tuned to be able to concentrate on one thing for hours on end, especially if its something monotonous and boring. If you love your job or hate it, use a work - rest rule to make yourself more productive and happier.

I often use a 60 -10 rule, which means is 60 minutes work, and 10 minutes of play or rest. I mainly devised this to keep my head, eyes and back from overstress, but it has a great psychological effect on me as well. I love what I do, but I look forward to the next 10 minute break when I can stroll around, paly a round of solitaire, just lay on the bed, or whatever I want. If you hate your job you will feel better knowing you only have to work through the hour and you can rest a bit, taking something bad an hour at a time is better than a day at a time.

If you work in front of a computer all day this will also have some health benefits, especially if you use the time to get away from your monitor. Stand up, do some exercise, walk around, stretch, do whatever you need to feel better, rest and get ready for the next hour.

I suggest creating your own rule, the one that works best for you, and also, not to be afraid of breaking it sometimes. Often I am very into something, and taking a 10 minute break would mean at least 30 minutes extra work, so it would be more productive to work 120 minutes and rest 20 just that once. You could also use a 90 -25 rule, or even a 90 - 90 rule, depending on how much you need to work, and how much rest you need to feel good.

You can extend this to the day level as well. Perhaps you hate taking breaks and would rather work 8 hours in one go, and having a long rest after that. In this case you could devise a 2 - 1 rule, where after every 2 days of work, you take 1 day off. This is of course only possible for those of you who work at home, but those of you who have an office job can utilize the hour based rule well.