Your alarm clock rings and your hand reaches out to snooze it. For the fifth time in a row.
A long day awaits you, with tasks from weeks before piling up — you already feel overwhelmed. As a travel agent, particularly one who does your work from home, you need to be on top of everything.
Working from home full-time can be a daunting task. However, getting jobs for travel agents and offering excellent service to clients is possible. All from the comfort of your home.
What Habits Are Hindering Your Productivity as a Travel Agent Working From Home?
A variety of unproductive habits and practices can get in the way of you earning enough as you work from home.
Once you identify and remedy these hindrances, you will be one happy travel agent working from home. Below are some things that make working from home difficult:
Not Creating a Space Dedicated to Travel Work
Working from home should feel like the holidays you are booking for your clients, right?
Wrong.
It’s important to maintain a working atmosphere in a particular area of your home. Working from your bed can hurt your productivity (and your back).
Letting Distractions Get the Best of You
Social media and the undeniable urge to take a siesta on your patio right after your lunch break are some of the distractions that you have to fight as a travel agent if you work from home.
That two-minute Twitter ‘break’ will have you falling down a rabbit hole. Sure, it’ll give you short-term satisfaction — but at the end of your binge, you will be far from pleased.
Not Planning Out Your Work Well Enough
Freestyling is amazing for rappers — but not for travel agents who work from home. Going with the flow is bound to leave you with huge chunks of important work undone.
It’s not good enough to make mental notes of what you must do; you should approach tasks with a written or typed out plan. Failing to plan when you work from home is a great way to lag behind.
Overworking Yourself to Compensate for Lost Time
When you procrastinate your productivity for so long, it’s bound to catch up with you. As a result, you attempt to do the impossible: jam a week’s worth of work into a few hours. This leads to poor quality work.
Rushing through tasks can cause you to make small mistakes. An example is mixing clients’ travel details. Those customer service gaffes are costly in your travel job.
This big time rush also leads to burning out because when you bite off more than you can chew, you end up choking. Burnout is horrible because it takes a toll on your physical and mental health in the long run.
How To Boost Productivity as You Work From Home
For every rut, there is a solution. According to a poll involving a thousand remote workers in the USA in 2019, people can be productive at home.
Working from home is effective if you do away with the distractions. A travel agent who works from home can conquer the challenges and be productive on the job.
Some helpful solutions include:
Making a Place Dedicated to Your Work
Your environment may be different from an actual office, but you can still create the work ambiance.
Set up everything you need to maximize productivity: a good table, chair, stationary and any devices you may need like your laptop and printer.
Doing so conditions your mind to know that every time you sit in that chair, it’s go time!
It also helps to prepare, which means ‘showing up’ for work. Get up in the morning, take a shower or freshen up and dress up for work. This helps to condition your mind into a routine.
Utilizing Planning and Project Management Tools
Technology often saves the day, and there are so many ways that this can work for you.
Apps like Trello help to put your travel projects together and track them. This keeps you accountable in your travel job. Mind you, a pen and paper are also good enough for the same job.
Approaches like the Pomodoro Technique help you break down time into sizable bits. The Eisenhower Matrix assists in prioritizing tasks. This keeps you on top of your travel work so that you accomplish everything in good time.
Minimizing Distractions When You Work
Make a pact with everyone you live with. They should respect your work hours and help with other tasks that you might need to do during the day.
This way, you can give your travel job the undivided attention that it deserves. I’m sure your little pup or kitten can have all your love at the end of the day and you can take that coveted nap.
Maintaining a Good Work / Life Balance
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Rest is necessary and burning out is not worth it. Setting strict timelines and boundaries will see that you maintain your sanity.
If you decide that working on weekends is a no-no, let it be so, except during a customer service emergency.
Enjoying Your Travel Job
Yes, working a full-time job in travel can be tiring. Even so, I’m sure there’s a reason you’re doing it in the first place.
Enjoy yourself, and look for the perks of being a home travel agent. Put your heart into it and you will see the progress that you make at your job.
Quick Take-Homes From The Problems and Solutions Above
To sum it all up:
- If you work from home, create a space dedicated to your travel job. Make it sacred, for work only.
- Limit your distractions for a seamless working day.
- Technology is your friend; find ways to organize work and increase your productivity.
- Burn-out is real — maintain your career/life balance while managing customer service.
- Put your all into what you do and enjoy your travel job!
Being Productive Makes Working in Travel Easy
Now that you have more free time, the possibilities are endless. Good time management and productivity can land you more travel clients or another job at a travel agency.
You also have extra time to enroll in a course to boost your career in travel or look up other travel agent jobs to learn new things and network with other people in the travel industry online.
Small Revolution Offers the Best Skills for People Who Work From Home
Small Revolution is a great resource for acquiring the skills you need to work from home. They offer different courses that can vastly improve working from home for you.
One course of interest is Successful Behaviors and Habits for online workers. The course enables you to be at the top of your game — whether you work freelance or you’re looking for jobs with travel agencies.
The skills you gain will help you get travel agent jobs. Plus, there are plenty of other courses that may be beneficial to you and your colleagues.
Lead your own small revolution, from the comfort of your home. Take a course and change your travel agency work life here, one class at a time.
