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Last Updated on January 20, 2024 by Work In My Pajamas
If you have never worked from home before and now find yourself in the position where it is the norm, the idea of it can be somewhat daunting. Many of us are used to busy offices, where we spend our time working, which is broken up by chatting with colleagues, going to get coffee or meetings.
Now we are faced with no commute to work and essentially waking up and being there already, so if you are struggling with being productive in your new home environment, we’re here to help. We’ve enlisted two remote workers, Wesley and Tanya to give us their top tops at improving productivity whilst working from home.
In This Post:
Get Up and Get Going
When we work in an office, we have the commute and this can serve as a way of waking us up, but when we work from home, you lose that. The transition from pillow to makeshift office can leave us feeling put out and cheated of that compartmentalising time, so one way round this is to not allow yourself much leeway. Get up, have a cup of coffee and dive straight into a task that you can easily accomplish. If you leave it too long, you will find your motivation waning and you’ll struggle to get into it, but this way before you have had time to register what is happening, you would have started checking things off your to do list.
Dedicated Workspaces
As much as the idea of working from our beds is amazing, it really is counterproductive. After enough time of working from our beds, our brain begins to re wire and think of our bed as an area where we work rather than sleep. To combat this, dedicate a workspace in your home. It could be your kitchen table, or you could clear out a spare room, either way, having your own work area can help increase productivity as that area is related to work. Consistency is key here, the more you visit the same space to work, the more you mind will instantly click into work mode when you get to that area.
Call People In The Afternoon
If you’re just getting up and moving around, the last thing you want to do is think about calling other people. Chances are you don’t particularly want to hear yourself talk, let alone another human being. Save the phone calls for the afternoon, that way you can focus on the items that you really want to get completed in the morning. Phone calls can often end up as social time, especially if you are ringing another colleague or client, so think of them as a reward for your effort in the morning.
You Don’t Have To Work From Your Home
Sometimes the idea of working from home is just too much, especially if there are other people in the household that work different hours or go to school. Make use of public WIFI and go to your favourite café and settle in there. Tanya suggests that if you make this a daily trip in the morning, it acts like your commute into work, so by the time you are there and have ordered your coffee you are ready to go. You may find that this also helps your productivity, fresh environments often can and if you work well there you can reward yourself by going back the next day.
Setting A Schedule
It may sound utterly drab, but setting a schedule can really help boost productivity, especially in the home environment. Working from home becomes a lot more fluid than working in an office and if you are struggling with productivity, it may be because you are used to doing certain things at certain times and haven’t factored this in. You don’t need to build yourself a rigid schedule that accounts for every minute of every day, but you will need a loose schedule, even if it is to act like cue cards when you aren’t sure what to do. Think about how you work in the office, is it emails first then, then a meeting? Try and build a schedule that reflects the routine you had in the office and what your productivity sore. If you want personalized calendars or schedule books to help productivity, American Sign Letters can print them.
Final Thoughts
Transitioning from an office-based environment to working from home can be a jarring experience, especially if we weren’t expecting it. When you get up, don’t ponder on the day’s activities too much, or you’ll struggle getting anything done, instead leap right in and get those first few items checked off your to do list. Try and stick to a schedule that is similar to the one you would do in the office, even if it is just listing when you take coffee breaks, that will help bring in normality to the day. Finally, although we all want to, don’t work from your bed!
