I Have Worked From Home for 10 Years
Here’s How I Mastered It

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #549: I Have Worked From Home for 10 Years — Here’s How I Mastered It

Jeff Sanders
Exactly 10 years ago, I was laid off from my job and began my journey as a guy who works from home.

There's a lot to say about my entrepreneurial journey, but we can save that for another episode or another podcast entirely.

This episode is about lifestyle optimization.

It's about finding a sustainable work-life balance.

It's about digging your heels into intentionality in a way that most people will never be able to experience.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 549.

I have worked from home for 10 years.

Here's how I mastered it.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high-energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Now in the episode this week, I'll break down what my life has looked like while working from home for the last decade, including a few years with just me, Tessa, our dog, Benny, and then a few years with me, Tessa, and our two young daughters, Maisie and Rosie.

Also share 10 of my greatest lessons learned and why you should always strive to put yourself first and your work second.

Let's dig in.

Now before we dig too far into the weeds, let's just state the obvious.

I wrote the script for this episode at 9pm on a Monday night.

I had worked for about 6 hours during the day and another couple of hours after I put my girls to bed.

Tessa usually teaches night classes on Mondays, so I have a quiet house to myself for a small window of time and I love to exploit it.

In other words, I flexed my working hours around my life hours.

I made time for daycare drop-offs and pickups, a one-hour lunch, a one-and-a-half-hour workout at the gym, cooking dinner for my girls, and a full day of work.

This is a fairly typical day.

I don't always work in the evenings, but when I do, it's almost always on something I love, like this podcast.

So the episode this week is about all of these things, making time for what matters most to you, getting your job done, and striking a sustainable balance you can maintain for decades to come.

I have really enjoyed my work-from-home lifestyle for the last decade.

There are so many amazing components to it, but of course, it's not without its flaws.

It's not for everyone.

It is not the kind of thing I'm going to paint as this beautiful, possible, amazing solution to the work-life balance question.

It is one possible solution, but it's not everything.

I have loved it, but I've also at times really despised it.

I have missed going to an office.

I have missed having coworkers.

I have missed all kinds of possible opportunities because I'm alone in my house all day, every day, most of the time.

So as much as I want to paint this picture that this is the best solution, it is a solution.

And if it's your solution, then I want to help you make the most of it.

And so the last 10 years of my life, I have worked really diligently to optimize my own experience.

Now, yes, the episode this week is titled, you know, how I mastered this process.

I didn't actually master it.

I did for me.

It is mastered in a customized version for Jeff Sanders alone, and I'm always trying to improve it.

I'm always working to tweak the system and make things better.

And so my goal for you is to master it for you, whether you work from home because you're an entrepreneur or remote employee in either scenario, you're going to need a custom solution to really guarantee the best possible results.

And so I've got 10 strategies for you that have helped me in a very significant way over the last 10 years.

And so let's go through that list one by one, shall we?

Strategy number one, take advantage of the health first approach.

This is the drumbeat of this podcast, right?

The 5 a.m. miracle, healthy productivity for high achievers.

I cannot stress this one enough.

I'm going to scream this from the mountaintops.

This is the thing.

If I have seen anything from my experience personally, firsthand, it is that intentionality is everything when it comes to working for yourself, working from home, working with more responsibility, more power, more opportunity, more that you get to choose, gives you more choices to make that are not going to work to your advantage.

Right?

When you have the power, you have the responsibility.

So in order for you to truly take advantage of the health first approach, what this really means in practical terms is that your calendar is going to dictate everything.

It will dictate when you sleep, when you exercise, when you buy your groceries, when you eat those healthy groceries you just purchased.

All of this is based on your calendar.

All this is based on your decision to make health your first and most important priority now and forever going forward.

This is my argument.

This is my life mission is to get you to a place where this is a true statement about you.

Maybe it already is, but maybe it's not, and it needs some tweaking.

Maybe you need to optimize this.

If you choose to work from home, you are choosing to live and work in a different way than others who go to an office or go out of the home to work.

And so when you're here, you get to make a lot of these fun choices.

Once again, your exercise, nutrition, stress levels, sleep, napping, you name it, everything is possible now, which means you get to make these decisions one by one on purpose to match the life you want to live.

This is lifestyle optimization at the highest possible level.

And I can tell you from 10 years of experience, I have seasons of my life where this has gone really well and seasons where it's gone very poorly.

We'll use COVID as a great example.

During the pandemic, a lot of people all of a sudden became remote workers without their consent and had to learn how to exist in that new environment in a way that would work for them.

For a lot of people, it was just terrible for so many bad and awful reasons, but for others it was a big opportunity to learn a whole new skillset and take advantage of the new freedom they now had.

If you have this freedom, you have the chance to then say, "I want to use it wisely."

Like I said, I had great seasons where I was healthy, productive, doing awesome work.

And then certain seasons for me, like during COVID, where I worked too much, I took care of myself less, and over time I gained weight, I got sick.

It was not my best choice or series of choices, plural.

And I lost touch with my own priorities.

I let it go.

I had a new set of criteria to which to draw from, and I did not stick to my guns here.

So if you want to do anything for yourself while working from home, please take care of yourself.

Health first, now and always.

Now speaking of your calendar, the second strategy is to optimize your calendar because it is more important than everything else combined.

Well, except for health first.

Health first, number one, calendar number two.

When and where you get your work done will determine your results.

This is the name of the game.

Time management is life management.

Knowing when you do things, where you do things, which things you will do when you get there, all of this will determine your results and ultimately your experience.

Being on top of your daily schedule, it's a skill to master.

And it takes time.

You're not going to be great at this at first.

If you're new to working from home, it will take some time.

It took me a long time.

In fact, I would argue I'm still working on it 10 years later because my life keeps changing.

It keeps evolving.

There's new seasons, new challenges, new goals, new jobs to do, new work to get done.

There's so much that changes about life.

Your schedule needs to ebb and flow with all of those changes, all those seasons of the year, seasons in your job, seasons in your personal life.

Everything has a time and a place.

And your calendar is going to reflect that and give you the best possible chance to optimize what your goals can become.

Because you're going to have goals, whether it's for your personal health and your fitness or for your results at the office or home office, right?

You have goals.

And your calendar reflects the reality of those goals being achieved.

Now not the seven days coming forward.

It's the seven days that just happened.

Your calendar shows what you did.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you wrote down past tense what actually happened, which I tend to do quite a bit.

Great for reflection, really great habit to adopt is to record your life as it unfolds so you have a really good sense of what you've been doing, where your time has gone.

It's a time log and it's very powerful.

So assuming you have a time log, you know how your time has gone, you can then optimize the next seven days, 14 days coming up and make those days even better than before.

So take your calendar seriously.

Really dig into the specifics about when you'll do the work, where you choose to work.

You work remotely, could be at a coffee shop, it could be at a library, it could be on vacation.

You could do work from a lot of places.

So figure out what works best for you and make sure your calendar reflects that.

Now the third strategy piggybacks on your calendar and really gives us some guardrails to work with.

The third strategy is to set real boundaries.

That includes start times, end times, your focus block of time.

You're going to block yourself from anything and everything that you know is going to distract you or send you off course.

The goal around boundaries with working from home is to in some ways actually mimic working at the office.

This is gonna sound pretty counterintuitive because in part you might think, well, I don't want to mirror my office experience.

I work from home, I got freedom.

Yes, you do, and that's the biggest problem.

Most people who work from home find themselves working more than ever, far more than ever.

You need defined working hours, start times and end times.

Specific lunch breaks with a start time and an end time.

That's what works.

I'm recording this podcast right now on a Monday morning.

In about 30 minutes, my lunch break begins.

And I'm gonna be there with my lunch break on time like I am every single day.

Because it's pre-scheduled, it's what keeps me on my toes and guarantees the results that I wanna see from my own day.

And so that's the goal for you, set boundaries that optimize the experience you need, not to mention, and this is huge, you don't want your work to bleed into your personal life.

Unless that's the kind of lifestyle that you define for yourself that you truly want, most of us don't want that.

Most people operate best when work life and personal life are separate.

There's a clear delineation between one and the other.

And so if you can define for yourself what that looks like, maybe it's a physical location to go to, or maybe it's just a time on the calendar.

Whatever the case is, define that up front.

Stick to it for a while, test it, see how it works for you, and then tweak as needed.

But stick to the boundaries and keep them hardcore because they will help you to feel that sense of rhythm throughout the day.

There's a start time, there's an end time.

You can look forward to things, you can schedule things better.

It just makes everything easier if the boundaries are real and you hold them true.

One thing that's worked to my advantage is the fact that my daughters have school, and when school is over, I have to pick them up.

And so when I do, I pick up, in most cases, my youngest daughter, Rosie, and then we go to the gym together and we work out.

So I have a guaranteed stoppage time for my work and a guaranteed time at the gym.

That's what you're looking for, real boundaries that guarantee your real results.

Now for the fourth strategy here to work from home more effectively is to dress for effectiveness and comfort.

Now one thing I've seen in these various seasons of my life over the last ten years is that what I wear has been fairly consistent, but I have made some important transitions over time.

So one thing I have focused on is to wear clothing that both accentuates the job I'm doing, but also my desire for comfort.

For example, when I record podcasts like right now, I tend to wear my gym clothes.

In large part because I tend to sweat a lot, [LAUGH] TMI probably, but it's a very active process for me.

And so I wear clothing that allows me to do the job well.

And so if wearing my very comfortable gym clothes allows me to effectively execute on the mission at hand, then that's perfect.

If I were to wear very stuffy, difficult clothing that I didn't feel comfortable in, well, that's gonna show up in the work that I do.

You've gotta be able to not just look the part, but feel the part as well.

And so obviously there is a tendency to lean towards wearing sweatpants at home and being extraordinarily comfortable.

I would argue in most cases, that's probably fine.

I'm actually, I'm not opposed to it.

What I'm opposed to is the lack of intentionality.

So if you were to say, I've got sales meetings during the day, I've got important Zoom calls I've got, work I wanna get done that matters to me.

You wanna dress in a way that accentuates the vision you have for yourself.

And so if you need to put on traditional work clothes that might be a little uncomfortable, but actually cause you to do your job better, then I would argue your goal is to figure out how to dress in the most appropriate way to get the results you want, but then of course, be comfortable, right?

You work from home for a reason, take advantage of that when you can.

Comfort is not a bad thing, unless it is for you.

If you find yourself getting a little bit lazy, a little bit sloppy, not doing your best work, not caring for your personal hygiene.

These things really do add up and they make a big difference.

You may have seen that during the pandemic, that a lot of people, myself included, we got sloppy and that shows up long-term.

You won't see it at first, but you will see it down the road.

And so you wanna make sure that you are dressing in a way that leads to where you want to go.

Once again, be intentional.

Yes, live your best life.

Yes, enjoy the sweatpants on occasion, but do your job and do it well.

Now shifting gears just a bit here, the fifth strategy is to schedule your household chores and errands very carefully.

If you've heard this podcast for a while now, you may have heard me discuss what I call clean house syndrome, which I believe is a real thing.

I see it in myself every day and here's what it is.

Imagine that you are like me, you're kind of a type A personality, you like clean and organized environment.

And so you decide, well, I work from home, I'm gonna make sure the laundry is done and the house is picked up and everything's clean and organized.

And once that's ready, everything looks good, then I'll do my job for the day.

I'll get started afterwards.

I will delay my work until later.

This is a slippery slope.

This is where clean house syndrome kicks in because you find yourself doing things that are less important than the things that truly matter.

So don't allow yourself to be distracted by your own environment, your own home.

Yes, there are chores to do.

Yes, there are errands to run.

Real life has not stopped because you work from home, but the tendency to then focus on home activities too often is a very real thing.

I have fallen victim to this for 10 straight years and I will for the rest of my life.

I have to constantly remind myself not to fall victim to this.

Not to do my laundry on a Monday morning when I should be doing my job.

Not to clean the house yet again when I literally could do it later after the most important work is done.

You're still gonna do the work.

You're still gonna run the errands.

It's all gonna happen.

And yes, you may have more flexibility to batch these things in smarter ways.

And this is the real key thing here, to create an environment and a schedule and a rhythm and routine that optimizes your personal life and your work life.

That both can be balanced, if that's possible, in a more unique and customized way.

Just don't let yourself get caught up in the chores and the errands and the household stuff.

And you're like, man, that job of mine, I'll get to it later.

Let's try to avoid that.

I've been there.

I know how it feels.

Laundry is fine.

You'll get to it later or just never.

Now for strategy number six, buy all the tech you need and then some.

[LAUGH] I love technology.

If you go back to the pandemic days, when COVID hit, I went a little bit bonkers and I massively upgraded my podcast studio and spent a ton of money buying all kinds of tech and gear that I definitely did not need but really wanted.

And I have it now.

I'm glad I have it.

It's nice, but it's not the focus.

It's not the point.

The point was and still is to this day, to buy the tech you need to guarantee the best possible efficiency and power to do the job well, and then stop.

If you work from home, you probably don't have an office printer available.

You need to buy your own printer.

If you need to record things like I do, you've got to buy a microphone and all the gear necessary to make that happen.

Whatever your job is, whatever tech you need, just guarantee that you have the tools you need to do the job well.

And if you're going to get fancy and buy the cool stuff, that's awesome too.

I'm a huge fan of that.

You want to buy a lot of tech, I'm not going to stop you.

Just make sure you have what you need to execute at a very high level.

Now for the seventh strategy, lock your door and hide from your neighbors.

[LAUGH] Okay, this is real.

I have two no soliciting signs.

I lock my front door most of the year, most of the time.

And I only answer the front door if I know who it is and I'm expecting them.

In other words, focus matters to me.

It matters a lot.

If you work in a traditional office, distraction is built in.

You've got co-workers and phones that are ringing and all kinds of things that are happening.

When you work from home, for the most part, assuming you don't have a chaotic home life where you work, you have more power to block more distractions.

And you need to take that level of focus seriously.

I don't let any distractions stop me from what I'm doing.

I'm in a focus block of time right now to record this podcast.

My phone is turned off, my email program is closed down, my front door is locked.

I am in the zone, in my studio, I'm doing the job.

That's what you want.

Get in, do the work, and get out.

It's extremely important to guarantee focus in every possible direction that you can.

Because of all the things that will pull you away from your job, it's going to be all the things that pull you away from your job.

Everything is possible.

Everything could be a distraction.

And it's your mission to identify the core distractions you have and to walk away from those.

Now, fortunately, in my neighborhood, it's very quiet during the day.

I don't get a lot of visitors, which is great, at least in terms of focus.

Counterpoint, if you need social time, talk to your neighbors.

They're great.

It's a wonderful thing.

It's not a problem if you need it.

The issue here is, once again, not being intentional.

Define what experience you want to have, who you want to have the experience with, and then put that on your calendar, put that into your schedule, and make that happen.

I lock my door.

I'm a huge fan of focus.

You may have an open door policy.

Once again, your life, your schedule.

The power is yours here.

But take advantage of that and do what has to be done to guarantee the experience you want to have.

Now, speaking of being social, strategy number eight is to go be social, which is really, really important.

You need to see other humans.

We all do.

And if you work from home, and you're more introverted, and you're hiding from other people-- believe me, I know how that feels-- you need to find some outlet.

My wife joined a book club.

Now, she has an office she goes to, but she still has social time outside of that.

Me, I like to go to the gym.

I see a lot of people, and I have friends there.

It's good to get out every single day and see human beings, and not just isolate yourself in this little tiny bubble.

Don't let the work from home lifestyle keep you too insulated.

There is such a strong tendency to get used to this, to get used to the idea that because you're alone, that's just who you are now and how you operate.

And I'm telling you, don't let that happen.

Don't let yourself get too locked in.

The world gets very small in the four walls of your house, no matter how big your house may be.

The world gets very small.

Don't let that happen.

Get out.

See people.

Be social.

Have fun.

Interact.

But of course, do so outside of your focus blocks of time, because those are also super important.

Once again, the balance here matters.

So schedule these things.

Make sure that what you value is on your calendar, and what you need gets done.

Now, the ninth strategy is one that I have discussed many times on this podcast, and I will continue to do so for years to come, because it has personally impacted me in a very profound way, which is packing my lunch.

I literally mean that.

In the case of the way that I pack my lunch, it's a literal produce bag.

As a vegan, I tend to really prioritize my fruits and vegetables.

And so I have an actual produce bag that I pack my food into, and I eat from that throughout the day.

On the days that I'm very intentional.

I don't always do this.

I should do it more often than I do.

But it's really, really powerful to be intentional about everything you can, but of all the things you control the most when you work from home, what you eat is fully in your power.

You're buying the food anyway.

From the grocery store, from the farmer's market, you are purchasing this food and bringing it home.

Whatever you bring home is what you have available to eat.

And if you bring home the healthiest possible food, well, then that's what you can draw from and then intentionally choose to eat every single day.

So my challenge to you personally is to pack a healthy bag of food at the start of the day and just eat that.

Don't let yourself get into this, once again, kind of sloppy and lazy pattern of wearing sweatpants and eating whatever you want.

It's just there's such a slippery slope here.

And I want you to keep the health first approach, that drumbeat going all the time.

Be intentional.

Make smart and healthy choices.

And you're going to feel better because of it.

You're going to get more work done.

You're going to feel better.

It's going to work to your advantage.

But just pack the bag.

Take that chance when the day begins and say, here's my food for today.

And isn't this great?

Here we go.

And finally, the 10th strategy this week to work from home in the best possible way, don't work from home.

Get out and see the world.

If you have the chance to, once again, work from a coffee shop or a library or go on vacation or take a trip or go do something different than you usually do, flex those muscles.

Flex your schedule.

Experience something new.

One of the most profound things you can do for yourself is to not do the exact same thing every day.

I love habits.

I love routines.

That's all I preach here on this show.

But one of the best things to do with a habit is to break it on purpose.

Take a routine and throw it out the window.

Start again from scratch.

Find a new routine, a new set of habits.

Or just take a day off sometimes and go do something weird and fun.

That kind of variety you can build into your schedule and into your life keeps things fresh.

And that freshness keeps you alive and energized and creative.

And we need those experiences.

We need to be able to see the world firsthand as often as possible.

So if you work from home, that's awesome.

My house is great.

I love my space.

I have optimized it physically and spatially for so many years now.

But one of the best things I do is I leave my house, I get out, and I see other things.

So please take that chance.

Love it.

Work from home.

Make the most of it.

And then get out when you need it, which is a lot.

Now I've got one bonus strategy for you this week, which I think fits really well in this conversation.

And that is if you're going to work from home, I think it's best to adopt a standing desk lifestyle.

Now I don't mean that from the specifics of an actual standing desk, although you can do that.

I think it's actually more important to adopt the philosophy of movement.

And what I mean by that is that a standing desk basically forces you to be up and active all day long.

Not to mention the fact that if you want to, you could just sit on the couch, lay in your bed, work from almost anywhere in your home.

And if you choose to take, once again, that kind of, eh, lackadaisical approach to the whole thing, I think it tends to lean towards the direction of low energy.

And one thing that I know has been true for me for so long is that if I can maintain a high energy perspective for most of the day-- obviously there's going to be ebbs and flows-- but if I can keep high energy as often as possible, I get more and better work done.

Years ago, I converted my very standard sitting desk into a standing desk with the really goofy DIY solution that I actually used for many years, including the majority of my recordings for this podcast.

I then, a few years ago during COVID, upgraded to a very fancy uplift desk that I am obsessed with.

It is phenomenal.

And of course, gives me the option to then stand while I work or record, as well as lower it down and sit as well.

Now, the thing about this is that it has allowed me to really dial in on my energy.

I can sit down if I choose to, but the vast majority of the time I choose not to, and in fact, I remind myself constantly to get up and move.

Yes, standing most of the time, but also physically moving, squatting, jumping, literally running, no joke, down the hall of my house.

Movement is so crucial, along with hydration, of course, some caffeine, good food, but all of this just adds up to, I don't want to work from home.

I want to be alive at home.

I want to do work I love, do it in an energetic way, add value to myself and my day and the work that I'm doing because I look and feel good.

Wouldn't that be great?

That's for me, one of my key goals is I want to feel emotionally in tune with my life and so if I sit for too long, if I'm too low energy, if I'm bored, if I'm stuck, stagnant, all of that just adds up in every direction of my life and so I can counter that by simply being up and active.

So if you want to go the direction of an uplift desk, I think it's phenomenal.

You want to do a DIY standing desk?

Awesome.

Treadmill desk, phenomenal.

Right?

All of these are great solutions that get you up and moving and once again, when you work from home, your time is your time.

Your life is your life.

You may have more restrictions in a regular office, but you probably don't have those at your house, so feel free to get creative and build a custom solution and yeah, stand up and run around and jump and be goofy.

Now I have a gravity boots solution in my studio as well.

Yes.

Inversion hanging upside down.

It's like bar above my door to my studio and I have the gravity boots in my office and at least once a day I hang upside down for about five minutes.

So sometimes it's that stuff, right?

Sometimes working from home means doing whatever you want to do.

As long as it allows me to have more energy, more focus, more creativity, feeling fantastic, that's the answer.

So dial it in, find your flow, do your thing, get creative.

This can be fun and honestly it really is.

Hey, for the action step this week, plan your lifestyle first and your work.

Second, this is the hardest part for most people and it's the most important plan.

Your healthy habits, your household chores, your errands, hobbies, kids, school schedules, and then work.

It sounds backwards, but this strategy will produce the optimal work-life balance that is possible when you clock in 20 feet from your bedroom.

Now, of course, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app, or become a VIP member of the 5am Miracle community by getting the premium ad free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and the fun begins bright and early.

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