Tips For Working From Home At Our Texas Luxury Apartments

Since the coronavirus pandemic hit, more and more of our communities are seeing their residents transition from office and other on-site work to remote work from their homes. From our East Austin luxury apartments to our spacious apartments for rent in North Dallas and beyond, our role as a property management company in Austin, TX and other urban hubs like San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston has meant that we’ve had to strategize about how to make our communities as work-from-home friendly as possible.

In addition to many amenity updates and added services across the properties we manage and develop, we’ve compiled a list of helpful tips for residents who work from home in our communities. These tips can help you set healthy boundaries and achieve a better work/life balance when home and office are one.

Set Work Hours

One of the biggest challenges of working from home is making sure work time doesn’t bleed into personal time and vice versa. Make sure to set official work hours and communicate them to your coworkers. Mark these work hours on your calendar if applicable. Stick to these work hours as best you can, and try to avoid making a habit of checking work emails or completing other work tasks outside of this time.

This will benefit not just yourself, but your employer and coworkers, who can form concrete expectations about how and when you’ll be getting your work done and when you’ll be available for meetings.

Establish a Dedicated Work Space

When you work from home, it might be tempting to work from the bed or couch, but you’ll work better and enjoy better relaxation if you keep some separation between your work and relaxation areas. Even if it’s just a small desk or a dedicated corner of your dinner table, establish a consistent work area and try not to migrate from it too much during your workday, except when taking breaks. This helps your mind and body pick up on cues that it’s work time and avoid confusion from relaxation- or entertainment-oriented parts of your environment.

Schedule Breaks

You should take breaks no matter where you’re working, but be intentional about them. When working at home, it’s particularly easy to take a break whenever you want, but if you’re getting up from your computer, browsing the internet, or playing with your cat every 15 minutes, you’re not going to get much done. Schedule a few breaks (a couple 15-minute breaks and one longer break midday is a popular structure, but you can choose whatever works for you) and avoid getting off-task outside of those breaks. That way, you get all the benefits of break time without letting breaks unintentionally steal your productivity.

Avoid Multitasking

You may think you’re a multitasking master, but the truth is that our brains are terrible at multitasking, no matter who you are. Focus on one task at a time as much as possible, and eliminate unnecessary distractions like a TV playing in the background or a Twitter feed open in one tab of your browser. The fewer distractions you have and the less context-switching you can do, the more efficiently and effectively you’ll do your work.

We hope we’ve given you the tools you need to work from home effectively! If you want to shop our East Austin luxury apartments and other RPM communities across the US, check out our Communities page.