The swift development of technology in the last two decades has changed the way people organize their work tasks.

Remote work and digital communication used to be a rarity only fifteen years ago.

Today, however, hundreds of millions of workers across the globe work from home and collaborate via software tools and apps.

These innovations can have a tremendous effect on business productivity and workers’ satisfaction.

Still, home-based workers and entrepreneurs are exposed to the risk of underperformance due to improper work organization. In the next few paragraphs, we’ll share some practical tips for new teleworking entrepreneurs to help them stay organized and successful business professionals.

1)     Eliminating distractors

When you go to the office, sit in your chair, and switch on your computer, you launch a routine process in your brain. Repeating this string of actions day after day generates a conditioned response by which you start performing your work tasks.

However, business owners and managers working from home don’t have this sense of routine. For instance, remote workers might be distracted by TV-shows, chores, or family errands they need to run.

As a result, their business performance will suffer.

If you’re becoming one of them, it’s time to change something in your daily schedule.

For starters, plan your daily schedule one day ahead. Also, set timers that will remind you when it’s necessary to switch to another activity. If you don’t need your mobile phone for work, put in the do-not-disturb mode.

Plan your meals ahead and make sure you always eat at the same time, to avoid feeling weak due to the lack of nutrients.

2)     Making a daily plan

We’ve mentioned the importance of making a daily plan in advance. This doesn’t only mean that you should write a few lines on what you’re going to do at work the following day.

You should embrace the entire philosophy of planning your business projects ahead. In that light, you can make monthly, weekly, and daily plans. Your monthly plans should contain several prompts with the gist of key business processes and tasks. Weekly plans should be more detailed, while daily plans should contain a schedule of activities.

You don’t have to spend hours making these plans. When you’ve made your monthly plan, it will serve as a fine framework for your weekly and daily plans stemming from it.

For instance, you can plan the activities for the following day during the last fifteen or twenty minutes at the end of the current workday.

These planning sessions won’t take too much time, and they will dramatically improve your productivity and organization.

3)     Optimizing online business presence

Entrepreneurs are people who need to communicate with their clients and partners as much as possible.

After all, seamless and timely communication is the key to smooth and steady business growth.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that you need to respond promptly to every message or email you receive.

In other words, if you want to be productive and organized, optimize your online business presence.

This is where email can be a vital asset. Whenever possible, communicate via email, and avoid chats on Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and other social networks. Chats give people a sense of real time, so your clients and partners might be impatient to receive your responses to their requests. Email, on the other hand, gives all the participants in communication more time to receive a message, think about it, and reply to it.

In addition to that, you’ll need a user-friendly and impactful website. As design professionals from a Houston-based digital agency claim, business websites are even more important for home-based entrepreneurs, especially during the pandemic. Since the number of live contacts is reduced, your website is your best business representative. If you equip it with up-to-date content and relevant visuals, it will successfully convey the message of your brand, resulting in higher conversion rates and a reduced need for excessive online presence.

4)     Keeping accurate business records

From project management tools and accounting solutions to the payroll and employees’ productivity, every entrepreneur needs to keep accurate business records.

If you’re messy with these data, your business will suffer.

Because of that, get ready to handle the organizational challenges from day one.

Make sure that you and/or your managers assign tasks to your employees and outsourcers through project management tools, such as Basecamp or Trello. There has to be a written track of everything you’re doing in terms of work organization and project management.

Furthermore, use accounting tools to calculate your taxes, manage your invoices, and keep track of your accounts payable and receivable.

The payments you give to your employees and other collaborators need to be processed via accounting tools, so that all the taxes and pension fees are properly calculated, as well.

Finally, maintain the identity and access management rights properly for new and former workers alike.

In other words, don’t let your former workers access your business software solutions.

All these features will ensure that you stay fully organized in terms of core business management.

No matter how determined you are to run your business in a disciplined and successful manner, working from home can easily turn into something completely different. To avoid unwanted outcomes, you need to rely on a set of tools and organizational methods from the first day of your entrepreneurial quest.

Apart from that, it’s important to create business schedules and plans to develop a sense of routine, which adds to productivity. Finally, wisely use digital media to improve your business performance, instead of letting them distract you.

All these steps will help you become a well-organized and efficient entrepreneur who can work from home, from the office, or any other place in the world.