Many people struggle with staying productive after shifting from working in an office surrounded by team members to being at home and all of its potential distractions. It’s not just possible to be as productive while working from home, but you can even be more productive! Below are a few suggestions based on the past 15 years of working primarily in a remote capacity.
Tips to Stay Productive while Working from Home
Start Early: When you work from home, life happens and there are a multitude of unexpected interruptions. Your neighbor stops by to ask a question, your spouse or roommate needs a quick “5 minutes”, or your son or daughter needs a snack or help with their online math lesson. Those interruptions are unavoidable. To ensure you accomplish what is needed each day as well as those tasks requiring focus, start early. While waking up at 4:30 AM each day is a challenge for most, getting up by 6 am is a great way to get a jump on the day. For those of you who are not morning people, flip the day around and carve out a few hours late at night to tackle critical tasks as well as to work on creative endeavors such as writing your newsletter, creating your social media plan, or building a strategic plan.
Treat it Like a Regular Work Day: One bad habit people can get into is flipping on the TV, watching Netflix, or playing video games like they do on nights and weekends. While it may seem like an innocuous break, those short breaks have a tendency to turn into a 2-hour binge watching session that shoots a hole in your day. Treat working from home the same way as you would office time and commit to keeping your TV off and reserve leisure activities for your down time.
Create Your Own Work Space: During my first year working out of my home “office” in Marina del Rey, I made the mistake of putting my desk right next to my bed. Without separation between work and life, I was living in a constant blended state of work and life. My productivity took a hit, but it also made it challenging to relax and sleep at night without the separation between work and play. If you don’t have the luxury of a dedicated office, try creating a workspace in your garage, laundry room, or any part of your house or apartment where you don’t spend a great deal of time and can avoid many of life’s distractions. Separation allows you to focus on work when it’s work time and to enjoy the joys of life after the workday has finished.
Schedule Breaks for Family and Fun: Working from home can result in a nonstop series of calls stacked on top of calls with limited breaks. Without built in breaks such as walking to meetings or bumping into colleagues in the elevator, you can end up working 8 to 10 hours with little to no breaks. While that may sound great from an output perspective, breaks are critical to help boost our energy and regain focus. To combat that, block out your calendar to play a game with your kids who are temporarily homeschooled or meet a fellow work from home friend for a quick jog (once the restrictions are loosened).
Make Time for Exercise: Regular exercise is a great way to reduce stress, clear your mind, and also regain your energy during the work day. Try scheduling a workout or a brisk walk in the mid-afternoon when your energy is dropping so that you can finish strong. I am an early starter, so I like to pencil in a cardio session around 11 AM or noon as a stress reducer and to regain my vigor to finish out the rest of the day. It allows me to use the late afternoon to handle tasks requiring real thinking and not just focus on low cognition tasks like responding to emails or getting organized for the next day.
Mix it Up: Working from home for days, weeks, or months on end can start to get monotonous without regular in-person interactions with colleagues and fun social events to break up the day. Try mixing up your calendar to give yourself a productivity and mood boost. If the morning is your go to time to get real work done, try flip flopping your morning and afternoon routine occasionally to stay fresh. While I reserve mornings for writing, I am starting to make time for it in the afternoons given the monotony of quarantine life. Mixing it up prevents me from getting bogged down in remote work and provides a lift to my productivity.
Adjust Your Time Blocks: Time boxing has been a huge boost to productivity for me and so many others. During this quarantine period and homeschooling my kids, I have realized that one hour time blocks just aren’t long enough given the multitude of disruptions that seem to pop up like cooking the kids lunch or helping them with a math assignment. As a result, I started using 2 hour time blocks to ensure that I can complete the task dedicated to that time window and reduce the frustration from tasks bleeding over from one day into the next. It has been a real boost to get more work done and also to ensure I have the right mindset for greater productivity. Try adjusting the blocks of time you commit to specific tasks based on the new work from home reality.
Make Time for Coffee: Regularly meeting for coffee is a great way to break up the monotony of the work week while nurturing your business relationships. Get out of your comfort zone and reach out to a new person you just met who might have a different perspective than your own or could provide new insight into your business or current high-value project. Back in the old days of 2019, I would regularly meet for coffee with fellow entrepreneurs, business leaders, and other interesting members of the community. In the current environment, I still continue to hold regular coffee meetings over Zoom to stay connected and re-energize my days.
Be Grateful: Expressing gratitude has been shown to both increase happiness and reduce anxiety. Given the stress and anxiety we are all dealing with in this difficult time, take time to be grateful for what we do have; time with family and friends, extra time to catch up on your todo list, time to learn new skills and hobbies, and even the elimination of the morning and evening commute. We can all benefit from lower stress and anxiety and a little dose of extra happiness which will go a long way to increasing our productivity.
Staying productive is critical to maintain our sense of accomplishment and ensure we hit our short and long-term goals. Working remotely offers a number of benefits, but it can also ding productivity if we don’t manage time successfully and make a number of key adjustments. Ensure a successful transition to working from home by applying the tips above.
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*Photo by Paige Cody