In 2004, my wife Patty and I decided to homeschool our autistic son because we knew he would need more help when he entered high school. I’d spent 20 years in corporate America, working for both Accenture and Microsoft, but in the fall of 2004, I became their part-time math and science teacher, spending the rest of my time doing business consulting and writing books.

Until then, I always had a client or an office to go to. With the change to a homeschool teacher / author / consultant, I now had nowhere to go every day. My office was our game room where we studied at home, our home office, or local coffee shops. It was definitely an adjustment and I learned a lot about how to be effective without having to go to a workplace. Now I can’t imagine it any other way.

In 2020, millions of people were quickly forced to work from home. When I started working from home sixteen years earlier, I had the benefit of preparing for my new life, a huge difference from those who suddenly found themselves in work-from-home mode without warning or preparation. Some aspects of 2020 compared to 2004 were easier and others more difficult, for example, the collaboration tools available in 2020 simply did not exist in 2004. But the bottom line is that the changes were massive and required significant adjustments.

In my 16 years of not having an office, I experienced a lot of bumps and bruises to achieve an effective work / life rhythm. The key to my learnings was the need to impose greater self-discipline on:

• what I do,
• how I manage my time,
• what and when i eat,
• how much i sleep,
• when and how I exercise,
• how “I turn off work”,
• and how I interact with others.

It’s those bumps and bruises that I want to help others avoid by switching to a sustainable work-from-home lifestyle, which I have summarized in five lessons:

1. Master the online experience – For Pete’s sake, if Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or other online meeting tools are an integral part of your business, take the time to really understand them and make sure the hardware you’re using creates the most positive experience for others who attend their meetings. Not knowing how to do things like share your screen, give others control to share your screen, or use an electronic whiteboard is similar to meeting a business associate face-to-face in a coffee shop with loud music and no chairs or tables. When you grope for tools, you send a clear message to your recipient that he or she is not important enough for you to create an exceptional online experience. Just as important, struggling with online meeting tools conveys that you are slow to adapt to change.
2. Plan “Done”, not “Do” – Every Monday morning I go through my to-do list and decide what I plan to do by the end of the week. I then schedule the time on my calendar during the week to work on each to-do item, then schedule a meeting on Friday at 5pm to summarize what I have committed to doing that week. The key to this is to express your to-do list in terms of a deliverable or “done”, not in terms of an activity or “to do.” If you think only in terms of activity, you are more likely to measure success in terms of how much time you spend doing something compared to what you actually did.
3. Put everything on your calendar – In my article “I can’t keep up!” Six Principles for Using Your Calendar to Get More Things Done, I talk about how to use your calendar not just as a work thing but as a life thing. This is particularly important when working from home because work start / stop events, such as commuting to and from work, no longer exist. With those barriers gone, it’s much easier to be less respectful of your own time. I had to learn that working from home does not mean that I can work at any time; it means that he had to be much more disciplined about when he would work and when not.
4. Set clear expectations with your loved ones – Working from home does not necessarily mean that you are always accessible. Having very clear expectations about when you will work and when you will not work is crucial to your overall effectiveness. Patty and I send each other meeting notices for social gatherings or other gatherings where one of us will not be available to the other. This works very well to keep us aligned and make sure we don’t over-commit ourselves.
5. Make physical and mental health a priority – While it is very convenient to work from home, it also means that you have to be more diligent to take care of your physical and mental health. I never wear my pajamas during the day, schedule exercise time on my calendar, such as outside of my work station, follow a regular sleep schedule, and * try * to be disciplined about snacking between meals. I also weigh myself regularly. This really helps if you want to maintain or reduce your weight and if you tend to wear stretchy clothing that doesn’t remind you if you’ve added an inch to your waistline.

For many, working from home can be a long-term, if not permanent, reality. Consider these five lessons to help you design a fulfilling and sustainable work-from-home lifestyle.