Productivity Tips For Working From Home
There are more people working from home now more than ever. In my previous job (prior to entrepreneurship), I was not able to do so. I had to be in uniform, at a specified time and ready to work. However, with most office jobs and new online businesses sprouting up, the opportunity to work from the comfort of your own living space sounds very inviting.
It may seem too good to be true - the comfort of staying at home and simply signing in to your computer, but there are down sides too. It can be lonely (unless you’re in zoom meeting central), there could be more distractions (aka: spouse and/or kids), and the biggest baddest one of them all - it can be hard to maintain focus and productivity.
Here are some tips to help keep you motivated, focused and productive throughout your day. These tips are not just for online business, but can be useful for anyone working from home, even if you work for someone else.
Schedule
It all starts with knowing what you are supposed to do. Just like you would maintain a 9a-5p in the workplace, you need to keep your hours the same for your business needs. If you work for someone else, make sure you’re maintaining the hours they specify. If you work for yourself, figure out how long certain business tasks take, and then use that as a template going forward. You might want to time track (literally tracking how long all the tasks in your business take). Some companies do this to eliminate tasks that are menial and which decrease productivity.
It’s helpful to know when you’re at your most productive as well. When do you focus the best? Again, you might not have the option if you work for someone else, but if you’re able to maintain your own hours you can figure this out pretty easy. This usually revolves around your most quiet time. If that isn’t an issue for you, find the time that you have the most energy. I usually find myself nodding off in the mid-afternoon, around 3pm or so. I usually try to schedule my most important tasks for the morning, when I have both quiet time and the most energy.
A schedule also means writing things down. There might be certain times to do certain things (i.e. like payroll on a Monday morning before noon). You can schedule in all your time sensitive tasks on a calendar or in a planner. (Time blocking with an hourly schedule works great for this). You might also want to have notes pages handy in case you need to jot down a quick note or an appointment time.
Plan
It’s always handy to have a list of items to tackle for the next day. You don’t want to interrupt your most productive time during the day, and if you start off with a list, you already know what’s supposed to happen as soon as you sit down at your desk. This can technically be the same as your “schedule”, but might also include tasks that are not time sensitive. They might be things that you can do in between meetings or important projects. These things could be added to your task list during the day. Some people keep a running task list, and just keep crossing off tasks as they complete them. The Franklin Planner system is great for this because you can prioritize the most important items, and do them first.
Another method to improve your productivity if you can’t manage the running task list (people’s brains work differently after all), is to only write down the top three to five most important tasks of your day. Then, if you accomplish those, the positive feedback of simply crossing off items on your list make you even more motivated to do more the next day. (Or, you can relax knowing you got your work done!)
Keep Organized
While the above two tips are also part of being organized, here we can focus on keeping your space tidy. Remember, you’re working from home and it may be difficult to separate your “office” space from your home space, especially if you have kids. Keeping your space neat and tidy really helps to eliminate distractions. You can find things easier, and you don’t have the added stress or anxiety of worrying about cleaning up later. The trick is to tidy as you go, or put whatever you use away as soon as you’re done using it. (Keeping a space for everything and everything in it’s place). Minimalism really helps with this, but that’s a whole other topic we can discuss next time!
Keeping your calendar, schedule and notes organized is also essential to remaining on task and focused. As you get appointments, write them down in the correct date and time slot. Keep all of your notes in one place, such as a notebook or a section of your planner. If you keep random sticky notes everywhere, chances are you could misplace the information.
Streamline your workflow
Productivity is getting the most amount of work done using the least amount of effort. It follows that you would want to do things that save time (not cut corners), and make your work easier. You can use techniques such as batching (doing a lot of one thing at once so your work is streamlined and you’re in the “flow”). For example, in my video process, I might film four videos in one day, and then do all the editing the next day. Another technique is theming your days. For instance, Monday you might do payroll, Tuesday might be something else, etc… Or, if your tasks don’t take overlong, you can break up your morning and afternoon with different “groupings” of tasks.
A major player in your productivity is basically being a master of your trade. The longer you do something, the better you get at it. The better you get at something, the faster you can do it, and the more efficient you become.
You can also create templates for your documents or workflows to make your process more streamlined, and (hopefully) quicker. There’s no sense in typing out the same information over and over again. If you have a template, it will save time so you don’t need to create a document from scratch each time.
Focus
Besides for having quiet time, or finding when you’re most productive, you can also use something called the pomodoro technique. You work for 25 minutes, take a five minute break and then work for another 25 minutes, etc…You can work like this for periods of time. The main point here is to actually turn off all distractions. This includes your phone notifications, and even email if it proves to be a distraction. You would be surprised at how much work you can get done if you have complete focus without any interruptions.
I hope these tips help you to focus when you are working from home. Let me know in the comments if you have discovered other ways of increasing your productivity! Until next week, stay productive and have fun!
Sandra 💜