Has working from home improved your writing routine?

It's been four weeks this week since I've been working from home due to the Lockdown and I won't lie, it's been an adjustment. Initially, there were a lot of technical difficulties getting the work system set up on my laptop...apparently having a brand new MacBook Air is less ideal than an old Windows laptop when it comes to downloading systems 🤷‍♀️ Then there was the question of where to set up my "desk". For the first couple of weeks, I rotated every couple of hours from the kitchen table to the sofa, on to my bed and lastly my dressing table. The other hurdle I came to was realising that having the kitchen about 10 steps away all day was VERY dangerous! Put it this way, I now had no excuse to make time for breakfast...or lunch...or any type of snack I found in the cupboards!!


But once I'd settled myself into my chosen desk space (the kitchen table) with my fully functioning - if not ancient - laptop and all snacks pre-consumed, I suddenly realised the biggest hurdle came last...Distraction.


The first couple of hours I would be fine. With a couple of doses of coffee inside me, it felt like a normal day at the office and work flowed fairly smoothly. But it was after lunch when normally I would head out of the office for a walk around town, but instead, I was doing the dishes, prepping food for dinner, just sitting down for an hour of daytime telly, that my mind began to unfocus and by the time about 3 PM came along I found myself struggling to keep the motivation up.


So this got me thinking: how on earth to self-employed people work from home every single day?! But then I realised, all I've ever wanted as my dream job is to be a full-time writer!! To get up in the morning, settle myself down at my "desk" and write until dinner time; that's the dream! Now normally when I write, it's one or two snatched hours at a time either on my lunch break or late in the evening so it's easy to keep focused, especially when you're in the zone. But if I couldn't keep focused on my day job for 8 hours a day, what kind of full-time writer will that make me?!

So what I want to know is, how do you keep focused when working from home? Whether it be how you've adapted during the Lockdown or if you already work full time at home...I want to hear your ideas!


These are the Top Tips that I've found work well:

• Switch your writing space up halfway through the day. So in the mornings, I'll sit at the table in the kitchen. Then after lunch, I'll move to my dressing table in the bedroom where there's more natural light. 

• Have a Jug of water next to you all day. I am notoriously bad for not drinking enough water as it is. But I find keeping a jug of it next to me helps me remember to stay hydrated whilst I work

• Play the radio in the background. Some people might not like music playing whilst they work but I find that I get distracted more by the sound of silence so I like to play the radio on a low volume whilst I work. But only the radio, not music playlists. If I started on a Spotify playlist I'd be up and dancing around the room in no time! 💃

• Don't stay in your PJs all day. No matter how tempting it is and how comfy you are, I find staying in my pyjamas even just during the morning makes me feel like it's the weekend and it turns me lazy. Getting dressed and ready for the day makes me feel a lot more proactive. 

Get outside during your breaks. I fell quickly into a bad habit of spending my lunch hours doing housework! I'll make a start on the dishes, or the laundry and suddenly I'm rushing around sweeping the floors and when it's time to return to work the house seems messier than before! So now I grab my coat and take a walk to get some fresh air and clear my head just like I would do if I were in the office


Do you do any of the above? Or do you have any handy tips for working from home? Or maybe have you found any aspects of working from home that you've found hard? Please comment below and let me know👇 😊 x