Working from home is something a lot of people dream about, you work around your own time and you no longer have to pay for public transport or spend excess money on fuel. Whereas, it can oftentimes be difficult for others. This is due to the fact that there can be a lot of distractions and procrastination while working from home. However, there are ways to overcome this. It can all be simplified when you have the ability to manage your time effectively and learn how to remain focused while working from home.
Working from will be new to a lot of people who are practising social distancing and aren’t used to being productive at home. This is a challenge as a lot of people try to adjust and find stability within their day.
Here are some tips on how to be productive while working from home
Create a Designated Work Space
Firstly, if you have a spare room in your house make it your designated workspace, this will help you get focused and move away from anything distracting. In saying that, you can create a work-space in your bedroom, in your kitchen, or living room. This is as long as you know that there won’t be anything that will disturb your work schedule. I wouldn’t recommend doing any important work on your bed or while sitting on your sofa. By doing this you are less likely to complete any type of work.
Lidasen Laptop Stand
Organise Clutter
This is something that I find helpful when working from home, I organise all my clutter. It helps me have a clear and refreshed mind before I can get into focus mode. So if you have things all over the place like books, notes, pens, pencils, cluttered around your workspace you need to organise it all.
Here are some things you should do to help you declutter.
Clean all unnecessary paper, do a paper purge. To find paper, receipts, anything that is laying around and put them all away in recycling been or putting everything where it belongs.
Put your pencils and pens in a pencil case or somewhere neat on your desk.
Every week you should do a desktop purge, so delete any files that you don’t need to use anymore, empty your computer trash bin. And check out for productivity apps to help your computer stay more organized.
Through unnecessary things away, and tidy your workspace. This will help you become more productive while working at home.
Create a to-do list
This can help you plan out what you want to achieve throughout the day. A to-do list helps you to create your targets, they are very useful to follow so you don’t get distracted into doing other things.
I create to-do lists every week, it helps me remain disciplined and stay on track with the work that I need to get done. Also, keeping a to-do-list helps you to stay accountable for your work schedule. It is a way where you can remove all the distractions and mental clutter out of your mind. Once you have your list on paper or digitally you can start to get things done.
And the best part about a to-do-list is when you see yourself checking things off as you accomplish them. This is a motivational method of being productive while working from home!
Mouse Pad
Have A Routine
Be clear on what you want to achieve every day. The great thing about creating a routine and sticking to it is that over time it becomes a habit. And it then becomes natural to you without having to push yourself to get things done.
When you have daily routines, it will help you remain focused, productive and on top of your day-to-day work tasks. This can be when you create your morning and night routine.
Time efficiency is very important, exercise before you do any work, this will help you to have a fresh start to your day.
Make Time for Breaks
When you work from home, it isn’t as structured as having a normal 9 to 5 office job so you have to set your own lunch break. And as you are the one with full control, set aside a schedule of when you should make time to have something to eat throughout the day.
Sometimes you can get very busy and you might forget to eat on time, this is a bad habit that I sometimes fall under, try and not get into that. Slot a time when you can your lunch and smaller breaks to help you function better which improve your productivity when you go back to doing your required work.
If you have time over the weekend, it is an idea to meal prep so you don’t have to stress about what you should eat during the week when you are very busy with your workload.
Time Blocking
This is when you give yourself a deadline of when to finish a specific task during each time block. Time blocking helps you become more intentional with your time, as it helps you spend specific time on something. For example, you can spend 30minutes to an hour on a specific task without any distractions. Once the times up, you then move on to the next task. This is a great method to use just so you don’t end up doing one task for too long.
Batching
Another method to help with your productivity is to batch tasks, this can help improve your productivity better. The idea behind this is to do similar types of tasks at one time. For example, if you are a freelance social media manager you can batch your client’s workload, so one day you could spend your day scheduling their social media posts. Then the next day you can spend it strategising different social media techniques and creating their content.
The same goes for bloggers, you can batch your tasks too, you can spend the whole day writing up blog posts. And another day you can spend on taking and editing pictures.
Put Your Phone Away
Again, working from home can be very distracting, there can be a lot of temptations to use your phone. This is where you have to self-discipline. Put your phone on aeroplane mode, that means you will not receive any messages, phone calls or get tempted to check your notifications.
Finally working from home isn’t all bad once you put your mind to it!
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