You work from home but you feel you work long hours? A few chores here and there drag your work? Working a little longer because you had a few things to take care of during the day?… If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Of course, having flexible hours means you can work whenever you want, but that’s not always a good idea. For me, even if I work remotely, most of my friends don’t, so I need to stick to normal hours if I want to enjoy some time off with them and keep my social life. Sticking to my working hours also means I should keep my chores and errands in control and spend my time productively on both my work and those daily tasks.

I personally keep a list of chores and errands I need to do and divide them into two buckets: big and small.

• Big chores and errands are: Doctor appointments, groceries, fixing your car… Mostly things you need to quit the house for and take an hour or so to complete.

• Small chores and errands are: Folding laundry, cleaning the bathroom… Mostly house-related and take less than 30 minutes or so to complete.

I’ve tried multiple ways to balance these tasks with my working schedule, like doing all errands one day and distributing the workload on the other days, working the evening… But only one way of doing things that stuck with me:

I strive for a maximum of one big chore or two small ones per day.

If I do more than this, my working day is disrupted in a way I can’t undo. So I find myself working long hours to accommodate the disruption.

As I said, one big chore or two small ones per day. No more. I personally found balancing things this way does not disrupt my work and focus for the day. All other methods I described above were very disruptive to my productivity and flow.

Have you tried other ideas you can share? Is this working for you as well? Let me know!