If you work from home, you likely do so as a freelancer or self-employed remote subcontractor. When this is the case, efficiency becomes your number one priority. You quickly realize that time is money and that wasting your time results in lost revenue. However, wasting time isn’t necessarily scrolling through your social media feed or sneaking in a quick game of Candy Crush while you should be working (although there is an element of that). It can simply mean adopting less time or resource efficient business practices that need to be overhauled if you’re to make your career as a remote worker as rewarding and lucrative as you deserve it to be.
The trouble is that the home environment is not always one that is conducive to working efficiently, even if you have sunk some of your own capital into building the perfect home office. Here are some easy and actionable ways that you can make working from home more efficient without spending money or spending hours and hours learning new skills…
Don’t email when you can text
Sometimes when you inevitably have to engage clients through email. It’s an essential tool for the day-to-day activities of a freelancer. Clients are unlikely to want to go over the nuances and technicalities of a contract over the phone or What’s App. Nonetheless, if you need an urgent response from your client, email is probably not the most efficient solution.
If your client is busy and rarely at their desk, an email can languish for hours or even days at the bottom of an inbox, resulting in you losing valuable time while you wait for a reply. This page will show you how to use text for business purposes. Texting is advantageous because of its immediacy. Ninety-seven percent of the time, texts are answered or at least read within 15 minutes.
Filter out nuisance cold calls with a virtual assistant
There is nothing worse than when you are in the zone and your working flow is interrupted by a cold call from a prospective client. While you may welcome the business, the call could not have come at a worse time. That’s why even the most modest of home businesses should invest in the services of a virtual assistant to help you manage and schedule calls without impinging on your productivity.
Plan breaks for yourself
Almost all freelancers in my experience fall into a familiar trap. After they’ve set their working hours and familiarized themselves with the processes of their working day they fall into the habit of trying to race themselves to the finish line, trying to wrap up each day a half hour before the last.
While this may result in the ability to clock off a little earlier, it is rarely conducive to the best work and can even leave you feeling exhausted and creatively frustrated. Plan breaks for yourself every few hours to keep yourself creatively productive and to prevent all that sitting from ruining your health.