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Practice Management > Building Your Business

What’s Your Pandemic ‘Work at Home’ Routine?

By Bryce Sanders

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Sometimes, time doesn’t fly. It’s been about eight weeks since almost everyone has been working from home. Your firm’s technology likely makes email, social media and client account information available on your home desktop or tablet. Calls to the office are forwarded to you.

Have you developed a routine for your workday? I’ll share mine, although our jobs might be different.

7:30 a.m.: “Arrive” at my office. Open notebook to my daily plan. Check phone messages. Review and answer emails.

8 a.m.: Visit LinkedIn. Review messages and notifications. Post something daily. Tally or make notes of messages for potential future business opportunities. Send personal messages to some first-level connections.

9 a.m.: Business calls. Ringing the cash register. Calls might be unlikely in the pandemic environment. Emails are a good substitute.

10 a.m.: Time for a coffee break. Visit with my wife.

10:15 a.m.: Revisit my daily plan. Build a list. What do I want to accomplish before lunchtime?

10:30 a.m.: Projects that ring the cash register. This might involve article writing, preparing for webinars or researching material for future training.

12:15 p.m.: Collect mail.

12:30 p.m.: Join my wife for lunch.

1:30 p.m.: Back at my desk. Revisit daily plan. List afternoon projects.

1:45 p.m.: LinkedIn marketing. I have three lists of contacts with the potential to provide business. Each month I send a personal message to everyone on each list. This takes a month, since I compose a few each day. They often contain an article link.

3 p.m.: Send LinkedIn invitations. I try to add to those lists of business prospects. I search by specific job titles or firms, focusing on second-level connections because we know people in common. It’s a virtuous circle. The larger the list gets, the more shared connections with people you are inviting to connect.

4 p.m.: Other projects. Business bills. Keeping the outstanding invoice list current.

4:30 p.m.: Open my business journal. It’s organized into questions: “What good things happened today?” “What other things happened today?” “How did I drive business today?”

4:45 p.m.: Write out the next day’s plan. Most of the sheet is for business tasks. There is a personal section including different tasks, depending on the day. These might include exercise, personal bills or virtual cocktails.

5 p.m. My business closes for the day. I rejoin my wife.

Not all days are identical. My pre-pandemic schedule was different. At this moment in time, I find this is an efficient use of my time. I feel I am “working from home.”

— Related on ThinkAdvisor:

Bryce Sanders

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