Ep. 78 When Working from Home Isn't Working [Jumpstart Your Year: Day 18]

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the 2024 Jumpstart Your Year series, where we're coming to you every day this January with mini episodes to help you get reflecting on what's working and what's not in your parenting and productivity journey.

Our goal with the series is to create momentum and spark creativity so you can go into the new year with clarity and intention.

On Day 18, Christina reflects on the questions:

Under what circumstances do you work best outside the home? Where do you go? How do you arrange it?

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Transcript

Christina: Hi, I'm Christina, life and business coach, work from home entrepreneur, homeschooling mom, and co founder of the Village Co Work and Community Space. And to jumpstart your year, we're coming to you every day this month with mini episodes to get you reflecting on what's working and what's not in your parenting and productivity journey.

Our goal with this series is to create momentum and spark creativity so you can go into the new year with clarity and intention. And today we are going to be talking about environments. So there have been studies that have been done that show the importance of your physical work environments on your productivity, on your innovation and creativity.

And as a work from home mom, we all know that this can be one of the biggest challenges. When you look at being productive, getting in the flow, doing all of the creative things that you need to do as a, as a work from home, you have distractions of. Potentially any of the people that live in the house that you have, you have the distractions of just being in your same physical environment all the time and having that visual to do list that you see constantly whenever you get up and move of all the things that you need to do around the house.

It can also depending on how you have it set up. You know, if you're just working in the same areas where you're also having quiet time, you know, like, or sleeping a lot of times we'll, you know, we might work in bed or do things like that. If we're working where we also just relax and have our downtime or connect with our family, you know, in kind of common living spaces, it can be hard to have that delineation of working and non working and for our brain to be able to fully turn off.

And for it to fully get into the working mode. So a lot of times when I'm working from home, if I have something that I really need to dig into, I have a space set up that's separate from the rest of the house. And then I can close the door and I can kind of have this, this space, which works great.

And I would encourage if you do have the ability to be able to do that, to kind of have that, that space available. So you do have that option if you need it, but sometimes we just need to get out. Of the actual house. I think that a lot of times as somebody who works from home, you know, we homeschool the kids.

My husband works outside of the home now, but sometimes he'll work from home as well. We just need to kind of get up and we need to mix it up. So what I'll do if I need to. Really get into a flow or creative, or I just need to kind of mix it up if I'm feeling a little bit stuck. If I'm feeling a little unmotivated is actually fully remove myself from the home and go and find a different place to work.

Sometimes just the activity around you know, with the village coworking community space, we have cowork sessions where you can actually work alongside somebody else over a virtual. Zoom and it's to just help to create that. focus and to be able to have that ability to be able to work alongside someone else that you would get in a traditional office.

And that can sometimes really help you to just focus and to stay on task as you're doing something. And I can get that sometimes even from going to, you know, I'll pick up and I'll bring my laptop out to a coffee shop and just kind of set up shop there for a little bit. Sometimes I'll go to the library and bring my stuff in there and just be able to kind of have.

that separation and have, you know, a little bit of muscle around me, but I'll typically stick my headphones in and that way I can just kind of concentrate on what I'm doing. But just having that change in environment is really important. And I think that the other thing that when we look at from, Kind of an environmental standpoint as well is the people that we surround ourselves with can have a big impact on our working relationship and how we get ideas or we get those connections from, you know, the random office chatter and things like that, that you don't get when you're working from home.

So how do I get some more of those interactions and how do I build a little bit more of that into my life as well? So things like intentionally setting up a coffee date with other professionals in your network looking at opportunities to be able to get involved. With other groups or activities that are going on just kind of keep and maintain a social and a professional network.

Working from home can be really isolating and that's a good opportunity to be able to keep an eye on what's going on, know what's going on in the community to be able to keep those relationships as well. And sometimes even just by going out and grabbing my stuff and going to the local coffee shop, I'll run into some of those appointments.

And then we can kind of have that interaction as well which just brings you to another level. You can also get that if you don't have that physically you can get that through mastermind groups or mentoring opportunities online. You can get that through things like the village coworking community space, but having mentoring.

The ability to connect with other people that are also ambitious, that are also driven and be able to have that interaction is really important. And especially so when you're working from home. So when you're looking at your environment and you're looking at what do I need to do to kind of change up?

If I'm not being very productive at home, or if I need to kind of just get into a different mindset, what are the things that I can do? To be able to create that shift. And that might even be like going to a friend's house and like having kids play, we've done that before too, where we'll go to a friend's house and the kids will just play and we'll both be working.

But they have the opportunity to kind of. You know, interact with friends. We have the opportunity to not have to be fully on the whole time. And that has been a really a beneficial thing as well. So what are some ways that you might be able to incorporate more opportunities for you to be able to work in a different environment and to change things up?

Is going to a coffee shop, something that you want to do is going to the library, maybe checking in with a friend, maybe trading off child care and just like taking it outside. I love to just go outside sometimes, especially when I'm in a brainstorming or a creation mode and just being able to take some books and stuff and go out to the park or go out on a out into, on a picnic table and just grab my stuff and work that way. So what things can you do and how can you incorporate that? And also, instead of waiting until you get stuck, how can you maybe do that proactively? What can you set up proactively where you can go ahead and have some of these things kind of in that rhythm that you have?

So maybe once a week you just plan that you'll go out and you'll work in a different area or once every other week. So you're not waiting until you get stuck and you don't have the motivation and you don't have the desire to do that, but you're just having that as a regular part of your life. So as you're considering looking at what you're doing.

What are the places that are going to be calling out for you? How can you experiment and try different things? And then in the other standpoint of how can you also create that environment of that social network too? So what things can you do? What opportunities can you look into? What are some other ways that you can also create that component into your personal and your professional lives?

So if you like this episode, you might also like the village, which is our community and co work space. where we have opportunities for connection, accountability, and intention study. You can check out the link in the show notes for the upcoming meetups, and you can also sign up for our email list where you'll, we'll get our daily prompts sent to you.

So you can actually do this work along with us. And if you'd like a more personalized support, feel free to reach out for private or group coaching with myself, I'd be happy to discuss those options with you as well. So we look forward to seeing you on another episode of parenting and productivity by design, and I will talk with you soon.

Bye.