Managing a work project from home can improve the odds of you meeting the deadlines and gives you more time to understand the project at a greater depth, which comes in handy if you ever need to present it to your supervisor or a board of directors. Despite the strategic advantage of managing a work project at home, such arrangements aren't always easy to manage and follow through.
Free Up Some Desk Space
Taking your work home can create space issues that prevent you from either living your normal lifestyle or working on your project or even both. Free up some desk space, which will be used to lay out all the blueprints and keep all the supplies/materials within reach, such as post-its, highlighters, dry erase boards, etc.
Stay Away From Distractions
Your flatscreen TV or gaming console can be productivity-zappers that prevent you from actually achieving anything important. While working on your work project at home, avoid the distractions by putting your home-based office in a solitary location. As the age-old adage goes, "out of sight, out of mind".
Know When to Get Out of Unimportant Situations
If you get stuck into a casual conversation with neighbors or you accidentally answer a cold call from a networking company, you have to know how to get out of it without hurting the other person's feelings. You can say things like, "I have a project deadline I need to get back to, so would you please excuse me?", to get out of the conversation and continue with your work.
Use Collaboration Tools
Skype, DropBox, and other software programs have become invaluable tools in today's mobile workforce movement. Collaborative tools can help you better manage your project with other team members by giving you a real-time channel for communication and a collaborative user interface wherein you can save, send, and manipulate documents.
Consolidate Your Accounts
It's hard to retrieve relevant emails and documents from multiple email accounts. Instead of switching between email accounts, consolidate all your accounts into a single one, and ask all your team members and other people involved in the project to contact you through that single email address. In addition to your work email, you should also limit your social media accounts to a single one for each project. If you are to contact team members via a Facebook group chat, stay with it until the project finishes.