051 Work From Home Like a Pro
Working from home can be a dream or a disaster—let’s make sure it works for you with practical, tried-and-tested strategies to stay productive, focused, and sane.
Quick Quiz Time 🥳
What is one method mentioned to mentally transition into "work mode" while working from home?
A: Checking emails first thing in the morning
B: Watching a motivational video before starting work
C: Physically leaving and re-entering your home
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Answer: C: Physically leaving and re-entering your home - so you can see the sun 🌞 as well as reset yourself to working mode.
051 Work From Home Like a Pro
Struggling to stay on top of work while battling distractions at home? This episode dives into actionable tips for setting up your workspace, managing your time, and keeping productivity high—all while keeping your sanity intact.
Working from home sounds great until the laundry pile, the noisy neighbours, or the temptation of a midday nap start pulling you away from productivity. One of the best ways to separate work from life is by creating a dedicated workspace—even if that means getting creative with dividers, curtains, or makeshift office zones. This small shift can help you mentally step into "work mode" and reduce distractions that creep into your day.
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046 Marketing Burnout Signs + Fixes
047 Your Strong Personal Brand Playbook
Your schedule should work for you, not the other way around. If you’re not a morning person, forcing yourself into a strict 9-to-5 might not be realistic. Instead, work during your peak productivity hours, whether that’s early morning or late at night, and use time management techniques like the Pomodoro Method to stay on track. Experiment with different structures, and don’t be afraid to switch things up if something isn’t working.
Distractions are inevitable, but you can control how much they affect you. Noise-cancelling headphones, visual blinders (yes, like the ones for horses), and setting clear work-life boundaries can make a massive difference. If working from home is your reality, let’s make it work for you! And if you need more tailored advice on building your brand while working remotely, let's chat at Video Confidence Coach.
What Was Discussed This Episode + Timecodes:
00:00 – The joys and nightmares of working from home
03:45 – Creating a separate workspace (even in a tiny space)
07:30 – Tricks to mentally shift into "work mode"
11:15 – Finding a schedule that actually works for you
14:50 – Eliminating distractions and staying focused
17:29 – Wrapping up with final tips for a productive work-from-home life
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Zoë Wood 0:00
Ah, working from home, it can be an absolute blessing or a real nightmare. Let's figure out which is which for you and your situation, and let's try it. Make it lean more towards the blessing than a nightmare, shall we? If you're tired of the old cookie cutter marketing advice and want to take your personal brand to the next level with bold, actionable strategies that truly reflect you. You're in the right place. Let's untangle your marketing mayhem with zo the video confidence coach on the unborn your brand podcast, unboring, your brand was recorded on what a rung land you So, yes, we are talking about working from home. So I am talking to any of you who are struggling with working from home, be it in a full time capacity, a hybrid capacity, so you still maybe go into the office a couple of days a week, or maybe it's alternate shifts or whatever, however it be if you are working from home, be it at any point, all these tips that I give you today are going to be incredibly useful and hopefully very helpful for any of you who need or want that ability to make it work. You want the ability to work from home and have that work from home life fit your life and your needs. So tried and true methods is what we're going to touch in today, and these things and these tips have mostly kept me sane, mostly, and have kept me productive with my business. I have been able to grow my business fairly significantly since working from home, and been able to maintain that relatively easily by using these methods as we go on. So first of all, one thing that I will tell you, and I'm sure that you have come across this whenever you've researched any methods regarding how to work from home effectively, is separating your work from home spaces. So what I mean by this is having a physical space that you can separate, that is purely for one aspect of your life. So if you have the flexibility and availability to be able to have a separate room, for example, like me, I work in a the smallest room in my house, which, unfortunately, as you may be able to tell, is the warmest room in the house, which in summer, is not helpful. But I digress. So having that physical space, in all honesty, and this is my main trick, something that you can close the door on. So when you're in your space, you close the door, you're in work mode. When you leave the space, you close the door, and you when you're at home, you're at home when it comes to anything that is work related, or either be it like a physical thing or maybe an email or something like that, you're able to physically put it in your office or your workspace and have it be there for when you need to work. And in those opportunities that you, for example, don't have a room or a closet or a shed or something that you could work out in those opportunities, I highly recommend looking at dividers or curtains or something that you could or maybe even strategically placed furniture, something that you can do to carve out a work zone, space, within your own space. I definitely was doing that type of work when I was doing that as a temporary measure, when I was living by myself in a very, very small apartment. So not apartment, really just a room, to be perfectly honest. And what I would do is I'd have my desk, and of course, do not, if this is something that you could do, I do not recommend it, but my desk was at least, like, less than a metre away from where I slept. And what I would do is that I put up these divider petitions, so when I would be working, I would like have this partition, and I just divide her, and I move it towards my bed so I had room to move, but then I wasn't looking at my bed because it was a separate space. I water and the following tips also helped me get into that mindset for work. And then when I came home, I moved to that divider out of the way so I wasn't physically looking at the space. It is separate to me because I'm no longer in work mode. I'm allowed to rest. I'm allowed to relax. It may be hard, but that's something that will help you be able to differentiate that as your first port of call. And it will also stop you looking at that laundry or that housework and going, oh, I need to do that. No, because you can't see it, therefore you should forget about it, hopefully replacing your commute, replacing your longer commute with a 32nd commute, even if it's not exactly leaving your house. So this one might sound weird, so please do hear me out, creating a ritual where you mentally shift into work. Mode by physically taking yourself out of the home and coming back in, but for work, sorry. So sit with me here. So my trick when I go to work in the morning is that I literally leave my house out of one door, take a short walk or walk around the a circle, walk around the front yard, whatever I've got the time and energy to do, to be perfectly honest. And then I come through a back door that is closer to my office space. So I have taken that time and that energy to physically, you know, take that commute, and now I am in work mode, because I have taken that time to have a commute. But also it can be as something as simple as 30 seconds. I've usually used the technique of having like three breaths, like something that takes three breaths, so like going outside, 123, breaths, and then coming back inside again, that commute to be able to help set you into work mode, will be a lot better than just going straight from, say, the family room, into your small office, and then being like having to bring all that baggage with you, the goal and in those events where, for example, you do not have the ability, like you don't have a backyard, or you only have one Door. For example, you may live in apartment complex, or you don't have the functionality of being able to leave out your door and come back. Try walking around like leaving like physical again, physically leaving your house, if you have the opportunity to walking around the block and getting some fresh air and then coming in. But what I used to use, or what I would recommend a couple of clients, even though I'm mentoring and marketing, this kind of comes up is I had a client of mine who would work in a who lived in an apartment complex. They would leave the front door, go around, go around the block, come back in, and when they would come back in, they would have left. I think it was like a pink ribbon or something on their doorknob. So when they would look down to open their front door, they saw the pink they saw the pink ribbon, and they were already like, Okay, I'm looking at the my doorknob. I'm opening the door. Okay, I'm seeing the pink ribbon. I'm already priming myself. I'm in work mode, so I take the ribbon in with them, and then they walk into the office again, into that separate space, because even though they're coming back into their home, they're able to be able to have a ritual that reminds them, hey, I'm going to work. I am in work mode. This is like this pink ribbon simplify, simplifies that I am going into work. So again, I know this is all very pop psychology, mind trickery stuff, but it actually just does work. You just have to do it a fair few times to get into the habit of things. And if you are someone who experiences any sort of neurodivergency, it is going to be a hard slog at the beginning, because you have such change, and usually with that change, there's gonna be a lot that comes with it, not just, hey, now you're working from home or working from home in a hybrid style, you're it's usually because maybe you've changed jobs, or maybe you've moved from a different position to another position, like there's also gonna be a lot of change with it, because there's a reason why you're working from home now. So with that change, giving yourself that opportunity to follow these recommendations, hopefully, but also to give yourself a bit of grace of, hey, not every time. I'm not always going to be able to go from like being, you know, helping out the home, to going into the office and I don't, maybe I won't have a chance to go do a little bit around the block of between, you know, between meetings. Maybe I don't have that opportunity. That's okay, but doing your best to keep that to that routine will help you in the long run, and help you be more productive, or just get you in the work mode sooner and make you feel better about being in that work mode.
Next one is time management, working smarter, not longer. So finding a schedule that works for you. So for I'm talking with people who may not be working a regular nine to five. For those of us who do, hats off to you, your schedule is already done. But for the rest of us who may have either a small business, or you're working in a more hybrid, flexible, flexible schedule, where they more care about your output as opposed to how many hours you're putting in, making sure that you find a schedule that works for you, and making sure that you again give yourself time to move around like that, especially during peak periods, or times of crunch, as We like to call it, in the biz, where things get very hectic, usually before a deadline or a project or something like that, I personally find that for me, I work best in the mornings, despite how my body and brain might feel, I do work best in the mornings I have a lot more focus to get bigger tasks done. Between the times of that 8am to 1pm so what I do is I make sure that even though I don't feel like it, I get up, I go for a walk of some kind, I come back in and work pretty solidly from that 8am to 1pm and then once I take that 1pm so for me, that works best with my neurodivergency of just being able to just Hardline, get it done, get the work done, and then once I hit that one 2pm stuff, I take a break. Look out the window, take, you know, go for a walk. Don't Doom scroll, but I take that opportunity to just take a break. Go have lunch. And then, depending on how I'm feeling, if I'm incredibly tired, go have a sleep just because the amount of chronic pain, let's just sleeping is the best thing to do. Or for those opportunities where I just need to get that work done, working when I'm at my most optimal and then in the afternoon, say, do some more grudge work, or more work that doesn't require my full attention requires me to do it, but doesn't require all of my attention. That is something that is very useful, and hopefully will make it more useful for you, and again, for these are, this tip is specifically for the people, and say, for example, if you are someone who works better in the afternoon, maybe schedule your meetings for the afternoon, and if that doesn't work for the project or the business or the company that you're working for, trying to find or being able to have that flexibility in your schedule, to know when you work best, and for my night hours, does it work in your life and your schedule to be able to say, sleep during the day and work at night? If you can awesome. If you can't, what can you do to meet in the middle? Because you know when you work optimally, when you work best. And I'm not talking about like burning the candle at both ends and burning yourself out. I'm talking about every day, what is the best time for you to work, even if your body may complain, what is the best time for you to work, and what can be replicatable for you, day in, day out. Other productivity tips that you can try is the Pomodoro tip method, which I believe is 25 minutes on five minute break. For me, that doesn't exactly work personally, just because every time I'm getting into that 25 minutes, I'm already in flow. I'm already doing the thing and taking a break just kind of annoys me. It works for some people. That might work for you and whatever. Or do you know, I push myself through the work in the morning and then I save the mindless stuff for the afternoon. Will that work for you? I don't know, but that's the point. You chest it out and you try it out. I do recommend giving yourself at least two weeks of whatever method you're trying out. Because, of course, when you first do something and when you first change, it's going to be hard, because you're changing for the first time, but then after that two weeks, will Is it working, or is it not working? Or you're like, are you dreading your own hell that you put yourself into? If that is the case, then change that hell to suit yourself better because you're working from home, I imagine you have some sort of level of autonomy, and in that case, let's make the autonomy work for you. So let's move on to eliminating distractions. So for me personally, having noise cancelling headphones. I have one pair here that I can see, and I have another pair in the home, these noise cancelling headphones are a game changer for me, especially when you live in a shared space with others, or like me, you live very close to neighbours who are very loud. So to be able to have those noise cancelling headphones both allow you to focus and allow me to like, listen to podcasts, listen to meditation music, be able to take myself out of my own head with a tool that, say can cost as minimal as 50 to 60 bucks. I usually recommend investing a little higher, but that is because I use mine all the time. So that's what works for me, for any of us who have visual distractions. So for example, for those of us who are working and living in the same confined space, or for those of us who maybe like are in a situation where you're working from, say, the kitchen table, or you don't have that flexibility right now to be able to carve out that space within wherever you happen to be living. At the time, I had one client literally made DIY horse blinders. So what horse blinders are, or are essentially pieces of, I think, leather for actual horses. You may see these at horse racing, or old fashioned like Clydesdale, like horse, I think horse and cart essentially these blinders cup on the sides of their heads, usually made out of leather. But of course, but of course, for our purposes, wearing some glasses and putting the like they use, like pieces of cardboard either side that physically stop you from being able to see out of your periphery vision, and distract you from and stop you from being distracted from whatever you can see around you. Now this may seem stupid, and they probably. Looked a little stupid at the same time, but it worked, though. It stopped them being so overwhelmed that they couldn't focus. They were able to focus on the screen in front of them. They weren't looking off to various things happening either side of them. Now, of course, they don't use this in public, which, as you can imagine, yeah, but in private, you do what you need to do. And of course, they have two different glasses. They have one with the blinders on, and then one that they take off, and then they can put on again, one that they can put on again for when they're having meetings or anything like that, that they need to see. But if you're able to tune out what pulls your focus, it gives you that control and that reassurance that you're able to move through the noise, the movement and any sudden urge to rearrange your pantry, your bookshelf or the various lotions and potions that are in the bathroom, because if you can't see it, and if you can't be reminded of its existence as you're in work mode, it's going to be a lot easier to be able to achieve that in the future, and also to keep that habit going. You may not need the blinders forever, but maybe for that month when you're in crunch mode and you're like, Hey, I gotta work from this time to this time with no distractions. Put on the things that eliminate distractions, and if that helps, put on the noise cancelling. Thank you for listening or watching. Unloring your brand. You can find detailed show notes with tools offers and episode transcriptions. Just click the first link in the description or go to Vcc dot training slash podcast, get involved and ask me anything about personal branding, video strategy or just a friendly Small Business chat via my email. G'day at VCC, dot training, that is G, D, A, y at Vcc dot training, the video confidence coach, would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the wadawurrung people of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which I record my podcast. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. I stand with the traditional custodians of these lands and working towards a more equal future. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land, look forward to me chatting at you next week, superstars.
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Feeling stuck trying to build a personal brand that actually turns heads? Women and non-binary super-stars deserve more than just a cookie-cutter approach to their worries. Zoë Wood the Video Confidence Coach untangles your marketing mayhem, helping you own the camera, craft killer video strategies, and connect with your audience like never before. You’ll leave with the tools to show up, stand out, and smash your goals.
Find out more about how to grow your personal brand with the power of video right here on vcc.training
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