Create Your Own Job & Work From Home
Working from home doesn't mean you lose the sense of professionalism. It means you have to create a warm work environment to become more productive than ever. The increase in productivity is because you are literally within your comfort zone. You will be more motivated because you are the boss when you are at home and no one will boss you around.
The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has certainly drastically increased the numbers of people working from home.
Companies like Amazon, ACX, Google, Facebook, Fiverr, Remote Global, Remote4me, Working Nomads, People Per Hour, Shopify, Etsy, Katra and many more have enabled many people to work from home and get paid generously.
Working at home will bring you happiness. You will wake up determined and go to bed satisfied.
When you work from home, you will be happier simply because there will be no more office politics, favouritism, sexual harassment, crowds, traffic jams and time wasting between breaks. You will be valued purely based on your quality of work. It is no longer about you.
When you are happy, you will be more productive. The highest happiness is derived from quality work when you put your heart into it.
Happiness does not come from doing simple work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a challenging assignment that demands our full attention and absolute commitment.
A job is a job. It's a way to pay for a living. You work to live, not live to work. However, if you are happy doing the job, it will not feel like work. Working from home will give you the freedom you need, which will make you happy at that job.
I enjoy writing because you can imagine and create anything by simply writing it. You can write in the comfort of your house. Writing to me is like playing golf but golf I have to be outdoors writing I can be at home. I derive the same satisfaction.
The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything.
To be happy and effective when working from home, you will need to develop your own habits and standard operating procedures so that you can avoid burnout, overwork and a deterioration of your health.
In this pandemic era, carrying out brick and mortar business has become more challenging. Combined with tremendous risks. You gotta rent out your shop space, spend money on the shop interior, carry inventory, and hire many staff to run your shop. Even during lock down when your is not operating you still have to incur all the overheads. Your customers cannot shop at your outlet, you will have no cash inflows, you will run out of cash in no time.
It is safer and more profitable to do e-commerce business. All you need is to create a website, place all your products on your sites, place it in a marketplace like Amazon, Walmart, ebay etc. There are many free hosting for websites you can use, I would either use Wix, ecwid, shopify and many more other web hosting choices. The start-up costs for e-commerce business upfront are pretty minimal and you can comfortably start at home. But you need to relearn and reskill yourself to be successful in e-commerce online store business. Most of these courses are free. You can create your own business right in your living room without carrying exorbitant overheads.
Nonetheless,you need to establish good habits whilst working from home. Here are some of these habits you need to adopt.
Set Out Healthy Working Hours.
One of the obvious benefits of working from home is no commute time. That means you can save from one to two hours per day of your life. The problem though you ended up working longer hours. What is my point? You should try to create flexi working hours and finish your day early. You can use the extra hours gained to pursue your hobbies and spend quality time with your family members.
Move or Pace Around During Quick Breaks
If you want to maintain the same working hours and finish work at five. If you start at seven a.m. you should get two hours of breaks. You should slot in eight breaks of 15 minutes into your work schedule. You should use these mini breaks to move around and even listen to music.
Do Not Burn Yourself Out
You must know your limits. Don't overdo it. If you enjoy your work, you take on more jobs, then at some point you are working long hours and that's when you might feel the weight of the world is on your shoulders. You push yourself and keep on hammering away, taking on more assignments and sacrificing your personal time.
As a result, you have more people relying on you and getting more work than you can handle and you become overwhelmed because of it you may face burn out. My advice, do not let that happen to you. It is not worth it. You must find a good balance between work and play.
I believe that everything in moderation is best. Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance. Everything in moderation, including reality. True happiness comes from moderation. Excess leads to depression. No one on his deathbed ever said: " I wish I had spent more time working".
Exercise Regularly
Ten thousand steps are not a target for fit people but a target of everyone who wants to maintain good health. Since you get to break eight times a day, use three breaks to walk around the house. If you can do 45 minutes of brisk walking, you will hit 10,000 steps.
Optimize Your Time Outside The House
One of the significant benefits of working from home is that you can also do everything outside the house at off-peak times. For instance, you can visit your favourite grocer during normal working hours. You will save a tremendous amount of time avoiding weekend or after hours crowds.
Another example is when you want to service your car. Instead of doing it over the weekend, you can set during the week. Most workshops were pretty empty. You can set many similar opportunities for appointments outside during these low peak hours. Literally, all appointments during the week are so efficient during working hours you can save months of wasted time, which you can make up earlier or later in the day.
Establish Rules With Your Family Members
Explain patiently to your family that when your home office door is closed, it means do not disturb. You need to focus and get in your zone. In the zone means you are absolutely focused on your work and can't afford any unwarranted distractions.
Be Professional And Deliver Results
Set out your daily objectives and deliver on all your daily promises. If you are results driven you can literally work anywhere even at the comfort of your own house.
Dreaded Workplace
If you have a job that you studied for, you are lucky! Most people study to become something but end up in a totally different field of work. This often has a negative effect on the productivity of a person and it shows in the quality of their work. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is splendid work. For most people, employment is part of their daily routine because they have to provide for their family. Don't be this person! You are setting yourself up for no good.
You can derive great pleasure from your working life if it is a career path of your choice. It is a job that aligns with your goals and values it will brings you happiness. Usually, the career we end up with is part of our purpose in life. It elevates you and helps you to grow into your best self. Having a job means you are part of a team and part of a bigger domain that helps build the economy.
The Impact of the Pandemic on Careers
The pandemic had both advantages and disadvantages on careers. Let's first look at the advantages: first, some of us can work from the comfort of our own homes. We are in an environment where there is less structure and you are not under the control of work rules all the time. Let's not forget, you do not have to wear uniform or formal clothes. You can wear comfortable clothes or even your pajamas.
In other cases, staff take turns to work in the office some days and from work on other days. The upside of this is that when there are fewer people at work, you have fewer distractions and are able to work effectively and focus more. Either way, we save money because we do not have to travel to work.
Prior to the pandemic, you were already feeling stressed out even before you even entered the doors of your workplace because of traffic and cars driving terribly. During lock down the transport costs and gas money can go into our savings or could be spent on something else.
For introverts and socially shy individuals, the pandemic is a blessing in disguise with work from home. Working from home means you can balance life and also attend to parts of your life that you neglected before, such as spending more time with your kids.
The pandemic has transformed the way we work drastically. At some organizations, you do not have to deal with customers directly. You can do most meetings via Skype or zoom. Even for applicants, the interview processes are done online and with the help of social apps. Going for an interview is less stressful and intimidating. Interviews are also straight to the point and usually take less time than a normal interview prior to the pandemic. Another upside for work seekers is that there are more remote jobs available and geographical locations do not limit jobs.
Downside of the Pandemic
The downside of the pandemic is that there are fewer jobs available and causes many people to be jobless. Unemployment rates are on the rise! The pandemic had a major impact on our careers. Our job security was threatened. Some lost their jobs because of retrenchments and the closing of organizations. Others are still struggling to find work. This is our sad reality and the economy of our countries will take a while to bounce back from the hard knock the pandemic caused.
Create Your Own Employment
In this Covid-19 era, you cannot rely on the job market. You gotta create your own employment. The world wide web is a big marketplace for freelancing. And you can work from your home and hunt for a job on the internet. If you love what you are doing, you will be happy about it. It will not feel like an assignment because you are enjoying it.
Find Your Purpose. Follow Your Passion.
If your work excites you, you will naturally be passionate about it. It will fuel you with the extra drive and energy in carrying it out. Follow your own passion and not what others tell you what to do. If you don’t wake up in the morning thrilled to pick up where you left work yesterday, then you haven’t found the right job. Allow your passion to become your purpose, and it will lead you to happiness that you sought for. The best feeling in the world is getting paid to stay at home to do things you love. It does not get any better than that.
Be Open To Learn New Things
Try to learn something new everyday even when you are at home. Always remain open to learn new stuff. If you don’t learn, you don’t grow and you will move backwards. It can be new knowledge or new skills. If you are new in setting up an online store, you must learn how to attract more traffic to your website. You need to have new skills in using the latest SEO tools and learn new creative ways of attracting business online. Learning never exhausts the mind. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
Daily Journal
Take one day at a time. Keep a daily journal. Make the most of your day as if it is your last. Even if you're at home alone maintain the discipline to keep your mind focus on your work.Try to always wear clothes that make you feel good and enhance your confidence. There is so much power in dressing up and looking good. Do not just do it for work but for yourself. When you look good, you feel good and that enhances productivity throughout the day.
Be A Good Listener
Good communication is your key to success. Communicate with everyone response to all their predicaments. If they ask for help try your best to do so.Mostly be kind and polite. Avoid profanity in your professional communications with people especially your love ones. You can't impose on people to respect you. You got to earn it.
Be Selfless & Generous
Act with integrity and be civil. Don't be too calculative be generous with people. Take that extra mile. Always give others more than what they deserve. Empathize, be selfless, It will make you feel good inside. You'll be happy for it. Be Grateful
Count your blessings and be grateful that you still have your health and a means to provide during these tough times. Happiness comes from within you. If you're sincere about you work you will derive tremendous pleasure in serving others. People will reciprocate and always look for you. If you attain a peace of mind happiness will seek you.
Exit Plan
If you are currently working but it is making you miserable you got to move out from there. Set a proper exit plan. Start your business at home on the side and slowly build it up. You can quit your day job once your business makes reasonable income that cover all your expenses. But do something don't let it eat you inside.
Final Word
Creating your own employment that excite you and doing it within your comfort zone can be that dream job that you are after and the answer in making you happier.