Mz Trina

Working from home wasn’t a huge change for me as I was doing it mostly before COVID lockdowns and restrictions. I quite enjoy not having to commute for about 3 hours per day, plus another 30-40min of getting ready.

Here are a few quick working from home tips and how they brought me to automate one of my daily actions.

Create systems

One of my obsessions is creating automated, digital systems. I started my line of work even before I realised this because I’d always thought of myself as an extremely creative type (writer, dancer, marketer).

Effective employees, business owners and entrepreneurs are the ones who constantly find ways to optimise their time. After creating systems, delegation is my next favourite thing to do (which in itself is just another part of a system). This is one of my favourite relevant quotes by James Clear:

Build routines or rituals to transition to and from work/home mode

I also enjoy some parts of a routine, which are really rituals to mark the beginning of a habit I’d like to continue. Transitioning from home to work mode when working from home is one of those rituals.

After my morning routine, I’d sit at my computer and open up the 5-6 applications I need open for work. Every evening, I’d close those applications. After about a month of doing this daily, I realised there must be a more efficient way to do these daily actions.

Automate digital tasks

Through a quick Google search, I found out that macOS has a built-in application called Automator. Holy bazonkers! It’s FREE and it’s ALREADY INSTALLED on my MacBook, so all I had to do was search and open it.

Figuring out how to use it took about half an hour of testing and experimenting with its functions. It’s pretty nifty, and I’ve yet to use it for something other than opening my work-related applications.

I found that the best way to do it is to create a script based on a calendar event. Now every weekday at 7 am, my “Work morning routine” script runs and my applications open. The only thing I haven’t gotten round to is figuring out how to disable the calendar notification so I don’t have to close it every morning. But one click is better than 6 searches and clicks.