For the past year, I traveled pretty much every week for work until this past October, when I had the whole month to work from home. Since we had moved to San Francisco in May, I hadn’t spent more than a week in our apartment and I am ever so grateful that my team allowed me to have this time to regroup and reset before returning to the road warrior life this past week!

Unsurprisingly, it was a bit of a shock to my system to realize that my normal routine was actually not working from home or even in San Francisco. My routine was hotels, and corporate cards paying for all of my food, and structured days around client sites and expectations. My first week at home - I was ALL over the place. I didn’t realize that I was going to have to “adjust” to being home! Sounds kind of crazy, right?

Anyways, after a month working from my apartment, I feel like I got to know myself and my city a whole lot better, and I wanted to share some of those things with you!

• Sticking to a morning workout routine made me happy, productive, and less restless. Working from home, you have pretty much anytime around meetings to fit in a workout. I realized that even if I did have the option to work out at 4pm, I have and always will be a morning exerciser. Sticking to morning workouts was much better for my psyche even if I technically had other times to workout during the day.
• Scheduling lunch dates every so often was excellent for sanity. It was a nice thing to look forward to during the week!
• If I had early morning calls where I couldn’t leave my apartment for any reason for several hours, having a makeshift standing desk was KEY. Helped me not just sit on my butt for hours on end.
• I absolutely LOVED cooking dinner for me and Nate every night. However, it was tough aligning his dinner schedule with mine. Sometimes he would get back at like 9pm and I would have already eaten dinner because I was so hungry! Then I would just watch him eat…

• Ellen DeGeneres’ 4pm show is HILARIOUS and worth having on in the background in the afternoon every day. Seriously. Highly recommend.
• I can be productive at home, at a coffee shop, on a train - wherever. As long as I have headphones and wifi, I’m good to go.
• As silly as this sounds, having fresh flowers and candles around our apartment really brightened my day and workspace.
• Meal planning is still tough, but necessary. You can read some of my meal planning recaps (and fails) here and here.
• It’s normal for consultants to be on the road 4 days a week and then in their local office on Fridays. Even though I was local five days a week, I went into the office on Fridays just like everyone else to socialize, re-connect with the larger company, and…not go crazy.
• October is the most epically beautiful month in SF. Remember how I complained about how cold it was when we first moved here? Everyone was like “just wait for fall!” They were so right. I couldn’t have picked a more beautiful month to spend at home!

I feel like I’ve done the two extremes in San Francisco - working from home or traveling every week. Any advice you have the next time I am working from home - tips and tricks that serve you well?