VOGUE MAGAZINE interviewed me recently to get tips to help people work from home efficiently. I listed down 17 tips – all of them coming from my own experience of working from home for 11 years now (since 1st March 2009). They published 8 of these tips in their article, but here’s the whole list:

1. Mark out a space at home to work from and keep it organized. Remember mess creates stress. (Tennis icon Andre Agassi wouldn’t let anyone touch his tennis bag because if it got disorganized, he’d get distracted.)
2. Check email in the afternoon so you protect the peak energy hours of your mornings for your best work.
3. Lock yourself in the room you’re working in so that you’re not distracted by other family members. If that doesn’t work, find yourself a co-working space close to your home where you can work from.
4. The biggest problem of working from home is the lack of routine and accountability. Create your own strict daily routine (what time you wake up, what time you start work, what time you exercise and what time you will relax). Commit to this routine and get a family member to hold you accountable to your routine.
5. Start your day early. The biggest advantage of working from home is that commuting time is ZERO! You can wake up at 5am and start working at 5:30am when the rest of the world is still sleeping. Use this to your advantage.
6. Being at home will give you a lot of flexibility to do a lot of things for other people. Don’t say yes to every request. Don’t be available for everybody just because you’re working from home. It just stems from a deep need to look good in others’ eyes. Saying no more often will keep you more productive.
7.  Be a contrarian. Buy your groceries in the afternoons when the store is not busy. Go to the movies in the mornings. Hit the gym when it’s less crowded. Do things at off-peak hours and you’ll save so much time. As a work from home professional you can afford to do all this – a typical office goer can’t.
8. Use Todo lists and Calendars to record all your tasks. When you work from home you don’t have a boss, so you have to create your own structures to hold yourself accountable. Under any circumstances do not let tasks hover on your mind. When things are off your mind and captured into a system that you trust, that’s the beginning of stress-free productivity.
9. Stop waiting for perfect conditions to launch a great project. Immediate action fuels a positive feedback loop that drives even more action.
10. Give up multi-tasking. Research has proved that that’s the slowest way of getting things done.
11. Use your flexible work schedule to take fitness breaks. Go for a 5 pm walk. It will not only do good to your health, it will clear your head so that you can come back and continue working with renewed energy.
12. Take a 20 minute power nap. This is again something most office goers can’t afford to do. A quick nap will renew your energy and virtually split your day into two.
13. Work in 90 minute blocks with 10 minute intervals to recover and refuel.
14. Drink more water. When you’re dehydrated, you’ll have far less energy. And get less done.
15. Find ways to keep you away from distractions. Give away your smartphone to a family member when working on an important project. Or install apps that prevent you from accessing social media sites.
16. Keep a track of how you’re spending your time at home. Be mindful of this and record the number of hours you’re actually working (and wasting).
17. Get yourself a coach or a mentor to whom you can report your progress week on week, at least initially till such time you get into a certain rhythm.