I've been working from home for about 5 years. If you want to be productive, the key point is to make a very clear distinction between work and leisure. On a normal job this is clear enough - the clothes, the physical setting, the timetable, all converge to trigger your professional mindset. Not so at home.
Organize a little corner of your house for working. Even if it's just a desk and a bookshelf. Keep it reserved for your work hours/activities only. If you can schedule certain activities outside the house, eg a shared workspace, even better.
Give yourself working hours and respect them - preferably for a whole week, but at least for the next day. If you have several activities, divide up your time between them in advance. If possible, set daily or weekly goals for the activities you are engaged in.
Dress for work, even if you are at home - not necessarily a suit, but put on some decent clothes and shoes, and brush your hair, make yourself presentable. Go out for a short brisk walk before starting work, to simulate your commute; possibly repeat at lunchtime (more relaxed) and in the evening.
Do not snack between meals - VERY important. Avoid sweets, fizzy drinks, pastries, as you are less physically active than before. Schedule exercise every day.
Create at least one "event" every day which takes place outside the house and involves other people. This will give a focus to your day. Make sure you get enough human contact. You'd be surprised how important work is in this respect, even if you have no friends there.
Edit: be very strict about your use of the internet. Reading news is not working. More generally, honestly evaluate how you use your time relative to the objectives you have set yourself for that day.
I'd like to offer a different approach - do not organize a separate work environment. Do not build a copy of your day job routine at home.
Try to reset your mind off the 9 to 5 work mode schedule. Be free and open to new experience. Let inspiration come to you at any time. Choose when, how and where you work. It can be early morning in bed. Afternoon in a coffee shop. Lunch time in a park, whatever. Do not build artificial restrictions. They will come on their own with clients and deadlines. Keep it flexible, exciting, adventurous.
But above all - be mindful of your body. Stay active. Hike, bike, run, anything. Find sport you like. Go out regularly and play it. You will meet new people, socialize and keep yourself fit. Physical fitness is a direct feedback loop to your overall condition.
This is great advice. It's important to create psychological compartments between "work" and "home" when working from home. And all the little things add up to form those compartments. How you dress, what room you work from, what hours you work, when and where you go when you go outside, etc. Make these things distinct from leisure activities. Don't work from a lounge chair in your bedroom, for instance, if that's where you usually go to kick back and read books. Don't work in a bathrobe or old gym clothes.
It takes a bit more effort to create the trappings of a working environment in your home, but doing so will keep you from slipping. And if this is your first major experience with working from home, you will slip. Everyone does the first time around. Set up mental guard rails.
You are working, as in earning money. Therefore snacks are an option. Six months down the line this guy is going to be looking back and seeing snacks as part of the good-old-days, when he had money for such things.
My advice would be to pare food down to the basics, as in a sensible lunch and a proper, cooked from fresh evening meal with no snacks. Get the sacks of pasta and rice in with canned goods, e.g. tomatoes, in bulk. Then do the rest of the shopping by bicycle, i.e. the vegetable shopping. Give up meat and go veggie on cost grounds. The jaunt by bicycle should also cover the regular exercise base somewhat.
Depends a lot on the person. For me, I've divided snack foods into "things I will eat when bored" and "things I will only eat when I'm actually hungry". There are very few on that latter list, but they are the only ones I'll keep in the house.
Avoid sweets, fizzy drinks, pastries, as you are less physically active than before.
Sorry, had to laugh about that. If the guy is coming from a high stress, high-paying law firm job, he probably wasn't very physically active before...law firm gigs don't usually leave a lot of free time. Most likely, he'll finally have the time to actually exercise now. But other than that the advice is definitely sound.
I never managed to figure out working from home and the whole knack of separating work from leisure. The best option for me has been coworking / hotdesking. The extra cost is more than made up for by the increased productivity and, more importantly, sanity.
A slightly more expensive and less sociable backup is working at a cafe - which I still find preferable to working from home.
Organize a little corner of your house for working. Even if it's just a desk and a bookshelf. Keep it reserved for your work hours/activities only. If you can schedule certain activities outside the house, eg a shared workspace, even better.
Give yourself working hours and respect them - preferably for a whole week, but at least for the next day. If you have several activities, divide up your time between them in advance. If possible, set daily or weekly goals for the activities you are engaged in.
Dress for work, even if you are at home - not necessarily a suit, but put on some decent clothes and shoes, and brush your hair, make yourself presentable. Go out for a short brisk walk before starting work, to simulate your commute; possibly repeat at lunchtime (more relaxed) and in the evening.
Do not snack between meals - VERY important. Avoid sweets, fizzy drinks, pastries, as you are less physically active than before. Schedule exercise every day.
Create at least one "event" every day which takes place outside the house and involves other people. This will give a focus to your day. Make sure you get enough human contact. You'd be surprised how important work is in this respect, even if you have no friends there.
Edit: be very strict about your use of the internet. Reading news is not working. More generally, honestly evaluate how you use your time relative to the objectives you have set yourself for that day.