If You Work From Home, Here’s How to Be Successful

Working from home seems ideal. No need to get dressed and polished for the day, no commute, and no distracting coworkers to face—what’s not to like? But working remotely isn’t as easy as it looks.

The undisputed champion of small talk topics revolves around one question: What do you do for a living? I tell people I’m a writer and that, although I’m technically a freelancer, I have a steady gig with Grammarly. (That insight sometimes evokes the exclamation “Oh em gee! I love Grammarly!” Satisfying.) Inevitably, I’m asked whether “freelancer” means I get to work from home. I do. I’ve been working from home for about twenty years.

Tell people you work from home, and the following conversation almost always ensues:

Person: Aaah, you’re so lucky!

Me: Yeah. It’s pretty cool.

Person: I mean, you can just get out of bed and work in your pajamas.

Me: Well, it’s a little more complicated than that . . .

There’s been a shift toward remote work in recent years. According to Global Workplace Analytics, 50 percent of the U.S. workforce holds a job that allows them to work from home at least part of the time, and approximately 20 to 25 percent of the workforce telecommutes frequently. Everyone seems to want to ditch the commute and the need for a business casual wardrobe and instead work from the relative peace and comfort of their own space.

Top Three Work-from-Home Problems and Their Solutions

I was telecommuting long before telecommuting was cool. I can’t imagine ever having to work outside my home again. And yet, there are some definite challenges that every remote worker faces. Here are my top three, along with some helpful ideas for tackling them.

1 Lack of Discipline

Allow me to speculate that you’re not as disciplined as you think you are. (And if you already know you’re undisciplined, allow me to speculate that you’re even more undisciplined than you concede.) I speak from experience. The siren call of household chores, playtime with your kids or pets, and naps are the least of your concerns.

The most dangerous distraction sits before you at your desk. Social media, YouTube, and the rest of the Internet are just a tab away. Online games lurk there, too. (And, if you’re of the gamer persuasion, you already know that the game icon on your desktop, or the console in the living room, poses a serious threat to your productivity.) Unless you find ways to minimize distractions, they’ll monopolize your work day before you can say “Whoa! Where did the time go?”

Solution:

Learn good time management skills. You can’t stick to a schedule unless you have one, so schedule your time in blocks.

The key is to make your time blocks manageable. If you book yourself for four solid hours of work without a break, you’ll find your mind wandering and your productivity tanking. The Pomodoro Technique, for instance, promotes scheduling twenty-five-minute blocks of work time followed by brief breaks.

Whatever you do on your breaks, I recommend leaving your desk. Stretch, breathe, grab coffee or tea, use the bathroom (thanks coffee or tea), or take the dog for a quick walk. Your body and brain will thank you. Too much sitting can sap your creativity and ability to think clearly. Grabbing ten minutes to do some yoga or go for a quick walk will clear your head and make you more productive.

Here’s a tip: If you find yourself lured away by Facebook or Twitter during your work-time blocks, try tools that keep you from surfing to distracting websites. StayFocusd is a good one for Chrome users. FocusMe, Cold Turkey, and SelfControl are a few other solid options. Oh, and turn off smartphone notifications while you’re at it.

2 Feeling Out of the Loop

If you’re freelancing for multiple clients, this may not apply to you. But if you’re one of the many telecommuters who work remotely for a single employer, staying connected to your team at the office may prove challenging.

There’s nothing like prepping your really cool project ideas only to hear the project was scrapped or has shifted directions, and that you were not only not informed of the change but also not involved in making it. In addition to leaving you feeling like you’ve wasted time, it serves as a reminder that being out-of-sight sometimes means being out-of-mind.

Solution:

Fortunately, there’s a lot of technology at your fingertips to make communicating with your colleagues easier. Stay active on company chat platforms like Slack. Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you feel ill-informed. Be persistent and go after the information you need in order to do your job. Never use “I wasn’t in the loop” as an excuse.

Be your own advocate. Ask to be included in meetings via video conference so you’ll have better insight into projects. If you can’t attend a meeting, ask a colleague for a quick debriefing by phone. You’ll feel more connected and tuned in.

Don’t make yourself difficult to get in touch with, either. If you’re required to be available during working hours, then consider yourself on the clock and answer promptly when your coworkers message or email you. If you’re accessible, your coworkers will be more likely to include you.

3 Going Stir Crazy

It’s already difficult to make friends as an adult. It’s doubly difficult when you don’t go to an office and connect with your coworkers. There are no daily break room chats, there’s no bonding over sports scores, and no getting the recipe for that awesome veggie dip Dave brought to the last office luncheon. You’re on a solo mission, and yeah, it can get lonely.

Working from home sounds great until you consider how isolated it can make you feel. Staying connected with your colleagues in the ways I described can certainly help, but it’s still no substitute for face-to-face interaction with people. You’ll have to make some extra effort to avoid becoming a creepy recluse.

Solution:

Make time for the friends you already have. Don’t turn down social invitations because you’re tempted to work—get your work done on schedule so that you can keep your evenings and weekends free. You need the downtime just as much as someone who reports to an office does.

Here’s a tip: If you don’t work on a set schedule, make one for yourself. Work reasonable hours. With few exceptions (crunch times, or when you’re getting caught up due to illness or time off), give yourself weekends off. Don’t be tempted to overwork just because your work is always within reach.

Find activities outside work that you can join. A few years back, I found myself becoming a work-obsessed hermit. I realized that, despite my tendency toward introversion, I needed to get myself out amongst people if I was going to be a happy and well-rounded. I love to sing, so I joined a community choir. I’ve since made some great friends, and rehearsals give me a reason to look forward to Mondays.

If finding a hobby or activity isn’t your jam, then at least consider working outside your office now and then. Take your laptop to a coffeehouse where you can watch people, and maybe even interact with a few, as you get work done. (You might be surprised by how well you work in that type of environment.) You could also look into co-working spaces or shared office space in your area.

Working from home can be wonderful. Right now, I’m sitting at my desk with a fresh cup of coffee to my left, a sleeping dog to my right, and a ukulele behind me. As soon as I send this article off to my editor, I’ll finish the coffee, strum the uke for a few minutes, and then walk the dog. It works for me because I’ve learned how to make it work. Here’s to making it work for you!

How Long Should a Paragraph Be?

Various educators teach rules governing the length of paragraphs. They may say that a paragraph should be 100 to 200 words long, or be no more than five or six sentences. But a good paragraph should not be measured in characters, words, or sentences. The true measure of your paragraphs should be ideas.

Your childhood teacher did not wrong you when he or she taught you that there should be three, or four, or five sentences in a paragraph. It is important to understand, however, that the aim in teaching this was not to impart a hard-and-fast rule of grammar, drawn from an authoritative-but-dusty book. The true aim of this strategy was to teach you that your ideas must be well supported to be persuasive and effective.

The model regarding paragraph length that your teacher undoubtedly taught you involves a topic sentence, a number of facts that support that core idea, and a concluding sentence. The proviso about the number of sentences between the topic sentence and the conclusion was not given to you because it was the magic formula for creating paragraphs of the perfect length; rather, your educator was attempting to give you a good reason to do adequate research on your topic. Academic writing yields the best examples of the topic-support-conclusion paragraph structure.

Recent research has provided a wealth of insight about how dogs came to be domesticated by humans and the roles they played in Native American culture. DNA studies on archaeological finds suggest that dogs may have been domesticated by humans as long as 40,000 years ago. When the first humans came to North America from Eurasia, at least 12,000 years ago, domesticated dogs came with them. They appear to have been highly prized by early North American hunter-gatherers and were their only animal companions for centuries, since there were no horses on the continent until the 16th century.

You can see from this example how a topic is introduced, supported, and then brought to its natural conclusion. Yet, not all writing is academic, and once you have learned the concept behind good paragraph construction—which is really the art of focused writing in disguise—you should know that there are times when paragraph “rules” can, and should, be broken.

How to Write Paragraphs People Want to Read

The fact of the matter is that although you may have numerous valid facts or descriptions related to your paragraph’s core idea, you may lose a reader’s attention if your paragraphs are too long. What’s more, if all of your paragraphs are long, you may lose opportunities to draw your reader in. Journalists, for example, know that their readers respond better to short paragraphs. News readers generally lose interest with long descriptions and even one-sentence paragraphs are considered both acceptable and impactful.

Firefighters rushed to First Avenue today to extinguish a blaze on the 1500 block. Anguished onlookers hoped that the flames would be subdued in time to rescue the building’s most prized inhabitants.

They weren’t.

The cat hospital was gone.

When it comes to maintaining a reader’s attention, a good rule of thumb might be to avoid writing more than five or six sentences in a paragraph before finding a logical place to break. That said, remember that the idea behind a paragraph might be short and sweet, or it might merit deeper explanation. There are no strict rules about how many words or lines your paragraphs should be, and there’s no need to lock your doors if you occasionally write long or short ones. The grammar police aren’t coming for you.

How did you learn grammar?

This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.

Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!

If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.

Alright or All Right—Which Is Correct?

People are often surprised to learn that alright is not an accepted spelling of all right. Although the one-word spelling of alright is seen in informal writing, teachers and editors will always consider it incorrect. To use the expression with impunity, it is best to spell it as two words: all right.

It’s possible that you stared at your paper in wonder the first time your English teacher marked alright as an incorrect spelling. It is equally possible that your English teacher saw nothing wrong with the spelling alright and that you are reading this because a coworker or editor has challenged you on it for the first time. So how did it come to this, and how did you manage to live your whole life to this point without knowing that alright is not all right?

Spelling Evolves Over Time

If you ever want to delve into a subject that is completely engrossing, read about etymology, which is the study of the origins of words and how they have changed through history. Words evolve in spelling and meaning over time, and in the case of the adjective/adverb all right, the accepted spelling is currently in flux. It can take hundreds of years for a variant spelling of a word or a two-word compound like all rightto take root sufficiently before it is considered correct. Alrightseems to have begun to appear in the late 19th century (Mark Twain used it, for example) and slowly became more common in informal communication–both in fiction and reality. This is true in both British and American English.

A good prediction would be that alright will eventually become accepted. Other English compounds beginning with “all” have dropped one l and contracted into one word, such as already, although, altogether, almost, and always. Of course, some of these words changed slightly in meaning, post-contraction, and alright remains perfectly synonymous with all right—for the moment.

Can I Ever Use Alright?

The quick answer is no, for two reasons.

The first is simply that no established dictionary fully accepts alright as a correct spelling. At worst, it is not listed or is flagged as wrong, and at best, as in the Oxford English Dictionary, it is considered a “nonstandard variant.” Respected style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook forbid its use.

The second reason is that in some contexts, alright will not work, and in all contexts, all right will never fail. Both mean “OK,” “acceptable,” “well,” or “safe,” but all right can have other meanings too.

Chloe’s test answers were alright.

This conveys the sense that generally, Chloe’s test answers were “just acceptable.” But what if that is not what you meant to say?

Chloe’s test answers were all right.

With all right written as two words, the most likely meaning of this sentence is that all of Chloe’s answers are correct, but it could also mean that Chloe answered her questions adequately. Another clarifying phrase would be helpful to resolve the ambiguity, but in either case, the spelling would be considered correct.

Here’s a tip: Thus, use this as your guiding principle: if you use alright in formal writing, you put yourself at risk of being viewed as a below-average speller. If you always use two words, you can never go wrong.

The battle of alright vs. all right is ultimately a no-brainer, because all right is always all right.

If you use alright informally in emails or texts to friends, however, your recipients will certainly know what it means. But when your writing is being published or evaluated, do yourself a favor and avoid this word completely.

Is it “Preferably” or “Preferrably?”

There’s only one way you can spell the adverb preferably. You can’t add another “f,” “r,” or “l”—there’s really no need to do it.

Let’s be honest here—mistakes happen to the best of us. We’d have a hard time finding a writer who, at some point, didn’t miswrite “the” as “hte” or “teh.” In haste, it might also be possible to mistake “to” for “too,” or “their” for “they’re.” And that’s perfectly fine, as long as you go over your work, notice your mistakes, and fix them. To do that, you need to know the correct way of spelling words. That might mean getting some outside help in the form of a dictionary or spelling checker, but with a little patience and attention you can make your work look flawless. We’re not always aware that we’re making a mistake, however, and some mistakes tend to be more widespread than others. This is the case with preferrably, perhaps the single most common misspelling of the word preferably.

Preferably, and How to Use It

Preferably is the adverbial form of the adjective preferable. They have the same meaning—better or more desired, even though the adverb preferably is also an alternative way of saying “if possible.” Let’s see the adverb and the adjective in action:

They have fine-tuned their defence, determining Cedric Soares was an upgrade on Vierinha on the right and ruling Jose Fonte was preferable to Ricardo Carvalho, 38, in the centre. —The National

And so for them it’s more preferable to go out and listen to something that they can dance to. —Time

If you want to have your say next time, join a party—preferably one whose aims you believe in—and buy yourself an upgrade to Democracy Plus class. —The Independent

So a self-aware product person—preferably one with a hunger to learn the other facets of marketing—is the right hire. —Venture Beat

Why the Double R, Then?

Now that we’re positively sure that preferably is the correct spelling and that there’s no need to double any of the consonants or vowels, let’s try to figure out why doubling the “r” is such a popular mistake.

The root word of preferable, preferably, preference and a couple of other words is prefer. It has its roots in the Middle English word preferren, and it can be traced all the way to the Latin praeferre, which means “to put before.” That’s how we use it today, as a verb that usually means to like something more than other things:

However, over half of those who research online prefer to make their actual purchases in a brick-and-mortar store, according to a report from Pragma Consulting cited by Forbes. —Business Insider

But then again, using the same verb, you could get this:

I would have preferred a clearer outcome. —

He has repeatedly said he won’t play for another European club, preferring instead to see out his years at Barcelona before finishing his career back in Argentina, but the change in circumstances could persuade him to think otherwise. —The Independent

So there are some words based on prefer that feature the double “r,” and they may be a cause of the confusion over preferrably. However, there’s a good reason that the “r” in preferred is doubled—when you add the suffixes -ed or -ing to words multisyllabic words and the stress is on the last syllable, the final letter of the word is doubled. In prefer, the stress is on the last syllable—pre-FER, which is why we add another “r” for preferred and preferring. Still, there’s no such rule about the suffixes -able and -ably, so we don’t have to double the “r.”