Having a hard time focusing on work? Here are our best 7 working from home tips to make sure you get the most out of your workday!
Working from home can provide lots of benefits, such as skipping the long commute, spending more time with your family, and the ability to schedule your own hours. However, it can also have a number of downsides that affect our performance.
There are hundreds of distractions around us every day, which can make it hard for us to focus. Since we are not able to fully apply ourselves to what we have to do, we end up working longer hours to get all of our tasks done and this can affect our personal and family life, as well as our emotional wellbeing.
Thankfully, there are hundreds of working from home tips, tricks, and methods at our disposal. We can choose the tools that match with our individual needs to create a strategy that can make working from home work for us!
To help you get started, we chose our favorite 7 working from home tips to help you design your own remote working strategy and stay productive:
The first thing we should think about while designing our strategy is what we actually want to accomplish. Think about what your goals are and how many hours you want to get done to specific tasks within your work scope.
While all of us would love to be able to sit down and stay fully focused on work, it is not realistic for the majority of people. Your work schedule should be aligned with both your goals and your personal life, and these may not allow for a “regular” schedule every single day.
If you live with others and struggle with finding quiet time during the day, consider starting work a few hours before everybody else wakes up. If you struggle with sticking to a routine, you can also change your schedule from week-to-week according to that week’s specific needs. Think about your own capabilities and be realistic with yourself!
There are hundreds of tools out there that can make your day a lot easier. Take the time to familiarize yourself with different platforms to find which ones align themselves best with your needs.
Here at PG, we live by the Google Suite applications and Trello. Google Suite has everything you need to plan your week, schedule meetings, and share team documents. On Trello, you can organize individual tasks, whether you are working with a team or by yourself.
Whether you create one on Trello, on a piece of paper, or on sticky notes, to do lists are indispensable when talking about productivity. When making yours, think about your SMART goals and about the individual steps you need to take to reach them.
By focusing on going step-by-step rather than on the entire finished product, you avoid feeling overwhelmed because of not knowing where to begin. It is also extra satisfying to cross off multiple tasks every day rather than waiting to finish one big task once a week.
Think about the things that keep your mind away from work. Is it your phone? A messy kitchen? A relative that keeps interrupting?
Take the steps necessary to reduce these distractions as much as possible, starting by putting your phone on silent mode while you work, scheduling time outside of your work hours to take care of any messes, and finding a quiet spot where your family cannot interrupt you as much.
This technique involves staying focused on a task for 25 minutes straight, and then taking a 5 minute break. You repeat this for 4 rounds, and then allow yourself to take a longer break for about 20 to 30 minutes before starting from the top again. This allows you to have 25 minutes of full focus and productivity for each 30 minute interval while still giving your mind enough rest.
Make time to practice relaxation techniques after work each day to make sure your mind fully separates from your tasks. Go for a run or a walk, meditate, watch a movie with your family, and allow yourself time to recharge before trying again the next day.
Now that you know how you can get started, it is up to you to design your own strategy to stay productive by using our favorite working from home tips. Remember that the key to productivity is to not dwell on the bad days, but to keep going even when things do not go according to plan. There is always another day, so keep pushing!
