10 Tips On How To Work From Home

Team GaryVee

3 min readMar 20, 2020

Like a lot of you during this time, Team GaryVee has been working from home!

Here are some fun tips from our team —

Choose video calls over audio calls

Video and face to face make working remote feel a little less “remote.” Stay connected with your friends at work!

Over communicate and make tech and messaging apps your friends!

One of the biggest advantages of working in an open office environment is the ability to talk to anyone just about anytime you want throughout the day.

People are able to bounce ideas off of each other a lot more frequently, and quickly ask for help when they’re stuck on something.

But when you’re working from home, you don’t have that luxury. So message your colleagues on Slack more often, and adjust your status when you’re away from your computer since it’s not obvious to people when you’re out!

Have a “work mode” ritual

When you’re working from an office, the “lines” between your “work” and “home” are a lot clearer. In the morning, you get ready and go to the office — then you finish up and come back.

But at home it’s super easy to start working from your bed or start talking to family or get distracted surfing the internet.

Not to say you should never do any of this, but too much can get you off track and kill your productivity! Having some kind of routine or ritual to get your brain in “work mode” can really help.

Set boundaries

People think remote work can make you less productive, but in many cases, people actually end up working MORE.

Since your work environment and your home environment are the same, it’s easy to let your work bleed into your personal hours. You might find yourself working at 10pm when you’re laying on the couch or checking on projects before bed that you wouldn’t normally check on.

This is where it can really help to set boundaries for yourself and cut yourself off the laptop!

Create your own standing desk

The benefits of standing vs sitting are well documented. If you don’t have a standing desk at your house, you could get creative and start using some boxes you might have laying around!

Block off time to cook and eat

Used to getting fast food everyday for lunch?

You don’t have to anymore when you work from home! Saying “you don’t have time” isn’t going to fly anymore ;) Schedule time on your calendar for lunch so you can cook and eat healthy — it’ll help your productivity too.

Use your “commute time” wisely

Most people spend anywhere between 1–3 hours a day total on their commute, going to and from work. When you have the advantage of working from home, you save that time. That really adds up!

Make sure you’re putting it to good use — spend that time connecting with family, getting ahead on work, or leaning into passions / interests / hobbies you’ve been thinking about.

Move your table by the window

It can get boring sitting inside all day with no social contact. Sitting by the window can help you feel more connected to the outside world!

“Full size” your windows on your computer

When you operate on full screen, you can’t see other notifications to distract you!

And put your phone out of reach as well for certain periods of time.

Try the Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro technique is a productivity method where you set a timer for 25 mins, work as hard as you can, then relax for 5 min. In that 5 min break, you can grab something to eat, or crank out 20 pushups!

Here are some other tools you can use to help with working from home:

Leave your tips in the comments — good luck everyone!