Top tips for working from home

Around 500 of our members work in England & Wales, with the vast majority in London, in the City and pretty much next door to each other! My role involves maximising the services and support that we offer to those members, e.g. dedicated events, issuing smartcards, networking, answering queries (mostly from big firm and in-house members) and promoting the Law Society mentoring scheme.

I have worked remotely from my home in London for almost two years now and I know that more and more of our members are doing so. In fact, Clifford Chance and Slaughter & May have this month agreed to roll out new remote working schemes.

Partly motivated by myths amongst my colleagues that a key part of my job description is meeting people for a coffee or a drink at 6pm, I wanted to clear up what working from home is like. I spoke with some of our members and together we came up with our top tips for working remotely.

Six top tips to working more efficiently at home

1. Get the day underway early

Book any calls or meetings for early in the day if possible. One of the benefits of remote working is your time is a bit more your own, so calls and meetings can be earlier.

2. Figure out a way to ignore distractions

I can't work in a messy space, so working at home has meant that I have to keep it tidy!

3. Get outside

At least twice a day during the working day, get outside. There is a tendency when remote working to stay inside, work through breaks you might normally take and check the internet rather than have lunch.

As one of our members recently said to me, "Go for a walk – nature is free therapy." Things can seem disproportionately bad when you have no one sat next to you to bounce things off, so stopping and taking five minutes in the fresh air is really important. After all, you don't even have a commute some days...

4. Get to grips with technology

Make friends with your IT team – you will need them – and they will tell you everything you need to know about how to connect remotely. Also, try using a good headset for work calls.

5. Know your work style

When you first take the occasional day to work from home, it can mean you end up getting lots done. It is that chance to catch up on admin or to get to grips with a project. However, day in day out, you need to know your work style, your goals and your limits. Time needs blocking out more carefully or you can end up just taking calls and travelling to meetings with little usable time for business as usual tasks.

At a conference someone recommended the Pomodoro technique to me. It is based on the theory that you can't concentrate for more than 25 minutes without a short break but you can achieve most useful tasks including meetings in this time. It has a bit of a cult following in the US and I have to say it works when you design your remote days by pomodoro – give it a go!

6. Stay connected

Are you an extrovert? If so, you will miss your colleagues and the coffee point chats. If you get energy from being around others you need to work harder to keep that going – make calls, send emails (write blogs..!). You need to find ways to stay connected.

I hope these tips are useful. If you work from home, please let us know your secrets!