Working remotely is a great experience, but having your own workspace can be difficult to keep up with. Follow these helpful hints for making your home office feel less like a place to work and more like a place to create.
Staying organized
Cluttered desk = cluttered mind. Before you start getting to work, clean up your desk space to help you set a productive tone. Plus you won't be tempted to take a work-break to clean up your space so you can stay on-task all day.
Go paperless - OneNote
One of the best ways to de-clutter is by going (at least mostly) paperless. By using OneNote to jot down notes and Planner to organize your tasks, you can skip all the notebooks and to-do list post-it notes. Plus, you'll be doing your part to be a little more eco-friendly!
Inspiration
When you're traveling, one of the hardest things is being away from your home and loved ones. Keep pictures of them around your desk to make you feel a little less far away. For more decorative inspiration, try decorating with memoribelia from your travels. I try to collect a map from each place I go to hang as a collage on my wall instead of a typical Pink Floyd poster.
Relaxation
Having your office in the same room as your bed can make it harder to stop your work and destress before going to sleep. Keep your office space relaxed by adding some Zen - I love lighting some candles and I have a piece of bamboo to add a little life into the room (for a lot less money than fresh flowers).
Motivational music
Without all the hustle and bustle of working in an office, sitting at your home desk can seem pretty quiet. Find a good playlist that keeps you upbeat and motivated throughout the day to make remote work a little less lonely.
Skype
Even with crazy time differences, it is always possible to find a time to Skype your colleagues. Skype for Business makes you feel like you're a part of the team. Plus it's free of international charges that come with phone calls. Always make sure your voice is still heard.
Can't stay productive at home? Find a local coffee shop or library to study in! I found this one the other day that made me excited to come back and get to work:
Working Abroad
OneNote Makes Working Without WiFi Do-able
By Kelly Cronin
I just started my next semester working remotely part-time while studying abroad in Marseille, France. Although my journey has just begun, I have already met many obstacles for working while abroad. Finding time, energy, and motivation to work when you first arrive in a new country is painfully difficult. Taking it slow the first few days is key, so after that you can pick rainy days or gloomy nights to cozy up in your apartment and buckle down for a few hours. Perhaps the biggest challenge so far has to be finding good WiFi. When traveling, reliable wi-fi is hard to find, and even harder to ask for if you don't speak the language. The good news is OneNote has come to my rescue!
Here's how to use OneNote without connecting to wifi:
Prepare
If you know you are going to be without wifi for a while, but you still need to get some work done, make sure you set up your OneNote ahead of time. Download documents you need from Outlook or SharePoint and add them to your OneNote. There is nothing worse than trying to get some work done and then realizing you don't have everything you need. Think of what you can do without wifi, such as writing posts, preparing topics for presentations, and editing images.
Organize
Make a To-Do List of things you need to get done with OneNote's check boxes. You can even set certain tasks as priorities. As I sat on the plane from Boston to Paris, I came up with a quick list of everything I can get done while traveling to and from anywhere:
Work - from literally anywhere!
Working without wifi might not be ideal, but hey a seven hour train ride is not ideal either. So make the most of both of them by using OneNote to start on any projects available to you. Even when I am sitting on the bus from school to go downtown or grocery shopping, I can use my OneNote mobile app to access everything my desktop OneNote has to offer. So if I'm on-the-go (without any data of course), I can instantly jot down blog ideas. And sometimes people watching on the bus is where I get the best inspiration.
In today’s post, we’re sharing a collection of fun ways to use OneNote outside of the office. The possibilities are endless, but these are our favorites.
Check out some of these awesome videos on how to use OneNote for more than just your business operations.
Making To Do Lists of All Kinds in OneNote
This is certainly a process that helps out in a business setting, but many of us create checklists for all sorts of things in life. Using OneNote to create to do lists can come in handy with things like preparing for your children’s school year, planning a move, and in many of the tips later in this post.
Going Shopping With a Plan on OneNote
Once you’ve mastered the art of OneNote tags, using the to do list function to create shopping lists will become second nature. Office 365 makes it easy to share lists with others, so having a list that all family members makes it easier to keep track of your needs (i.e. you don’t end up with three cartons of milk when you only needed one).
Clipping Content From the Web to OneNote
What do you do when you want to save content from the web? Maybe you have a system of bookmarks, or you use a social tool like Pinterest, or maybe you even copy and paste to a Word document. Instead, try out OneNote! It’s easy to take screenshots and even save an entire page using the OneNote Clipper extension.
This function lends itself well to a work or school setting, but why not try using it in your personal life as well? You can record quick notes for yourself while you’re multitasking and come back to them later.
Working Abroad
