While working from home comes with some unique advantages, maintaining productivity often becomes a challenge for many people. Whether you’re telecommuting, freelancing, or self-employed, several things can decrease your productivity.
From distractions created by family members and neighbors to the absence of continuous pressure from colleagues to get things done, several factors can be there.
So, what can you do to stay productive when carrying out remote work from home? To help you find the answer, we’ve created the following list of 22 highly effective methods.
Without further ado, let’s delve deeper into the list.
How to Maintain Productivity While Working From Home?
Create a Routine
You can add structure to your day by creating a routine. And when you have complete control over your time and how you spend it, it helps you maintain a work-life balance and have a productive day.
When creating the routine, give yourself time to prepare for the workday, even if you need to wake up a little early.
Stay Away From Multitasking
The desire to multi task sometimes becomes strong when people work from home. However, various studies have revealed that multitasking can negatively affect your memory and brain. These include temporary drops in IQ and reduced focus and concentration, among others.
Therefore, try to give one task 100% of your attention and complete work in batches to stay productive.
Set Up a Designated Home Office Space
Whether it’s an entire guest room or a corner of a room, it’s a must to have a designated home office space. This needs to be your area of productivity, quiet, and peace. It’s a great way to be productive while Working from Home.
The objective here is to create a designated home office, not to make your entire home your office. It’ll help ease your stress and maintain your productivity.
Take Micro-Breaks
Did you know that taking micro-breaks helps improve performance and increase energy levels while Working from Home? Whether for five minutes or 30 seconds, your brain needs time to recharge. You can stretch for a bit or grab a glass of water to allow your brain to rest quickly.
You may also try to follow Pomodoro time, using 25-minute blocks to work on designated tasks and then take a five-minute break.
Eat Foods That Help You Stay Fresh
If you eat right, it’ll show in the way your brain works during the day. This is the reason it’s essential to stick to healthy foods.
You may want to focus on snack-sized veggies and carrots, sliced cucumbers, grape tomatoes, fresh fruits, dried foods, and lots of water. You’ll snack healthily without even realizing it.
Get Started Early
Diving into your work as soon as possible is an effective method to stay productive when you are working from home. Simply starting working on a project right in the morning can help you make gradual progress on it throughout the day.
Otherwise, the morning sluggishness may wear away your productivity and motivation.
Minimize Your Use of Social Media during Work Hours
For many remote workers, the ease of browsing social media is one of the key factors that lower their productivity. If your browser shortcuts have your social networks, remove them to improve productivity while working from home.
You may also try working in a private browser window during work hours. It’ll eventually minimize the number of daily social breaks you take.
Plan out Your Assignments Ahead of Time
Spending time on which assignments you’ll complete today can easily take you away from actually completing those things. Therefore, it’s always important to modify your agenda as per your requirements.
However, it’s equally important to have a clear plan outlining all assignments before you begin your day. Try outlining your schedule the day before, as it’ll help you get started on it as you begin the next day.
Stay Connected With Your Colleagues
Working from home doesn’t mean you need to stay isolated from what’s happening in your organization. Use video conferencing and instant messaging tools like Zoom and Slack to stay connected with your colleagues.
This’ll help remind you of how your work contributes to your company’s success, helping you stay productive.
Notify Others That You’re Unavailable During Work Hours
Make sure that your family, kids, neighbors, friends, and roommates know that you won’t be available during certain hours in your work days. You need to be gentle and precise about your unavailability during work hours.
When you politely notify others about it, it becomes understandable for everyone.
Keep Your Home Office Space Clean
If your desk or home office space is loaded with files, papers, and lots of unnecessary things, it’ll automatically distract you from improving your productivity.
Clean your desk thoroughly and keep only the things you’ll need to complete work on time. You may use a storage box to keep your bills and documents inside it to keep your space clean.
Try Virtual Coworking
Virtual coworking is about signing into a Zoom call and staying connected with colleagues during the work day. You need to open the call with others, talking about their goals for the next one or two hours and setting a timer for that.
It may come as a surprise initially, but ultimately, it’ll help you feel motivated and stay productive.
Think About Your Professional Goals
Remembering your professional goals is a very effective method to stay productive when you work from home. When you feel isolated from the physical office, remember that you need this job to achieve your professional goals.
And to achieve those goals quickly, you need to stay productive.
Be Sure To Have a Proper Lighting Setup
Proper lighting can help you stay productive and in a positive attitude. If you’ve dim lights at your workspace, change them as they tend to lower productivity.
If you have a window beside your home workspace, you can always use natural light in the morning. However, if you cannot access daylight, try to work under 17,000K blue-enriched light bulbs. According to studies, this helps to increase work performance.
Understand When to “Log Off”
It may be tempting to be “always on” when working from home, but it may lower your productivity. Stopping work and logging off for the day is vital to maintaining overall well-being and work-life balance.
You can create an end-of-work routine, such as going offline, taking a walk, etc., to feel like you’re logging off for the day.
Work With Targets in Mind
The flexible work-from-home model gives remote workers the freedom to work how they want as long as they efficiently meet their deadlines. Therefore, prioritize focusing on results instead of the time logged.
While some projects require a defined number of hours, others are purely measured based on deliverables. Rather than telling yourself that you’ll work for four hours straight, have a certain task to complete.
Keep Your Phone on “Do Not Disturb” Mode
Did you know that in the US, the average person spends approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes on their phone in 2022?
While mobile devices are great for staying connected with family and friends, they also create countless distractions.
So, turn on the “Do Not Disturb” mode on your phone during work hours so that you can focus on your work entirely.
Utilize Task Management Software
These days, task management software is widely considered one of the home office essentials. This is because you can maintain productivity by managing various tasks efficiently by using it.
You can choose from Asana, Trello, Hive, etc., to stay on top of deadlines, monitor progress, assign tasks, and manage workloads.
Related: 16 Essential Software Tools for Virtual Assistant
Try Time Batching
Time batching refers to a productivity system that you can use to focus on a set of tasks during a specific time period without interruptions.
When time batching, club similar tasks together into “large,” “medium,” and “small” tasks based on the amount of brain power required and how long they’ll take.
Designate Particular Days for Particular Work
Designating specific days for specific work will help you manage your workload more efficiently and stay productive.
For instance, you can designate Friday afternoon for filing everything. This will help end your work week without feeling like you still have some unfinished work.
Save Challenging Tasks for The Time You’re Most Productive
Nobody can maintain a steady productivity rate from morning to evening. It naturally goes up and down throughout the day.
To stay productive when working from home, save more difficult tasks for when you’ll be in the right mindset for them. Manage easier tasks during slower points of your day.
Commit To Performing More
Projects, assignments, and tasks often take longer than you think. As a result, you often do less than you need to complete.
So, try to overestimate the tasks you’ll complete during the day. Then, even if you cannot finish them all, you’ll still have a good list of completed tasks.
The ways we discussed above should help you get the most out of your daily work routine. Start with a few, and you may find it easier to stay productive when working from home than you think.
