For people who haven’t yet worked from home but are dreaming of it, the idea of working from home often comes with plenty of connotations of having tons of freedom, and plenty of free time to go along with that.

All too often, however, when those same people actually do make the transition from a conventional day job to a home-based job, they discover that it’s actually shockingly easy to lose track of time, and to more or less inexplicably become “busier” than ever before.

This happens for various reasons, ranging from more time spent lost in procrastination, to more time spent micromanaging elements of your business that you likely weren’t responsible for when working for a company.

If you find yourself in this situation, and wish you could regain some of your precious time, here are a few ways to save more time when working from home.

• Pay other people to manage aspects of your business that fall outside of your own core areas of expertise

A good Managed Services provider can handle essentially all of your businesses “online” dimensions in a professional and reliable way, while leaving you free to “reinvest” the time and energy that would otherwise have been spent on things like server and website management.

Everyone has their own core area, or areas, of expertise in a professional context. Some of us are very well-rounded in general, and are quite comfortable operating in a number of different capacities – but it’s unlikely that many people are really capable of “doing it all” – at least, not well.

By simply paying people to manage some of the areas of your business that you’re not extremely proficient in, you may increase the quality of your business as a whole, while simultaneously freeing up a lot of time and energy.

• Use the Pomodoro Technique, and put barriers in the way of your most common distractions

Procrastination is inevitably going to be a worse problem when you’re working from home than when you’re working in a more conventional setting, because, among other things, you just don’t have the same level of supervision, and you’re surrounded by your own everyday comforts and gadgets.

It’s important to use tricks to help you to overcome your most common distractions – such as by putting barriers in the way using things like web blockers.

It can also be very useful to use productivity-boosting and time-management techniques such as the Pomodoro Technique, which involves working for “sprints” of 25 minutes at a time, followed by five-minute breaks.

Among other things, the Pomodoro Technique helps to chunk down otherwise daunting blocks of work, while also keeping a sense of urgency present.

• Include “willpower-strengthening” exercises in your daily routine

Research on willpower seems to show that it behaves something like a muscle. That is, you can “strengthen” your willpower through regular training, and you can also “exhaust” it by overloading yourself.

Kelly McGonigal’s book, “The Willpower Instinct,” argues in favour of performing daily “willpower-strengthening” exercises to help you stay resilient, and stay disciplined and focused in the pursuit of your goals.

One of the exercises that is apparently very effective here is daily mindfulness meditation. But, anything else that might put your willpower to the test – such as starting off each shower cold – might well help, too.

The working world is changing, to the extent that hasn’t been seen since the industrial revolution. We tend to think of technology as already being all-touching, but this isn’t really the case. Things are just getting started. In the future, a significant portion of the workforce will be working from home, thanks to technology. And indeed, it’s already happening now in forward-thinking companies, who understand that employees are happier — and work better — when they’re working from home. If you’re curious about how you can introduce remote working into your business, take a read of some of our tips below.

Slow Beginnings

Even if you’re fully committed to establishing a work from home culture at your company, you’ll want to get things moving slowly. It’s a big shift in any business, and if you rush into it, you might find that you make mistakes that harm the bottom-line of your company. Start by allowing a select (small) number of employees work from home, on one day a week. This will let your business slowly get used to the new way of doing things. From there, you can look at increasing the numbers.

Who’s Interested?

You might be interested in gleaning the benefits of having your employees work from home (which include reduced energy bills and greater productivity), but you shouldn’t force anyone into working from their own property. While it’s a dream for some workers, it’s a nightmare for others, who, for one reason or another, just can’t get into the zone when they’re working in their living room. Even for those people who are interested, the idea might be better than the reality. There are advantages to working in a regular office that people don’t fully appreciate until they’re working at home.

The Right Setup

Of course, you can’t just tell your employees to work from home and expect fantastic results if you’re not first ensuring your company has the right setup that’ll make the process smooth. It’s technology that has allowed such freedom when it comes to where we work, so make sure your business has all the right pieces in place. Cloud storage is imperative, since it will enable your workers to access the company’s important documents from wherever they are. If you don’t currently have a cloud storage solution, visit this website to see the options that are available. You’ll also want to have software that’ll allow to easily communicate with your remote employees, such as Slack or Skype.

Checking In

When we say, ‘working from home,’ we don’t mean every day of the week. The week should be split between the house and the office. An employee that never checks in with the office will likely become disengaged after a while. We might live in a digital age, but there’s something to be said for a little face to face time every now and again.

Remote working is the future of work, and there are real benefits to employees and employers. Look at making the journey now.