Tips To Stay Productive While Working Remotely
If you are working remotely, it can be challenging to juggle the demands of your daily job, time with your family, and home concerns. Staying productive is necessary, but how? In this blog post we will present our top ten tips to stay on top of your daily tasks and meet your deadlines, all while working from home. Let’s get started!
Tip 1: Set a Schedule For Your Family
If you have school-aged children that are home during the work week, it can be difficult to care for them and stay productive at the same time. Finding yourself in this scenario can be frustrating, so it is crucial that you establish a schedule for the entire family. Consult your partner and try to work out your schedules to accommodate the need for childcare. For example, perhaps you could work in the mornings while your partner works later in the day. Or you could try waking up an hour earlier to get more work done in the morning, thus lightening your load for the afternoon.
Tip 2: Establish Your Workspace
While it can be very tempting to work from the embrace of your bed or couch, consider setting up an official place to work. A makeshift space on the dining room table or a desk in an office or bedroom works great. Ideally, whatever workspace you settle on should be in a room with a door, so that you can shut out distractions. You also need to be able to fit all of the supplies you need for your job into the room in which you choose to work. These could include a computer, printer, paper, headphones – you get the idea. What you want to avoid is the need to get up and retrieve items, which will cut down your productivity.
Tip 3: Get Up Early and Start Fast
You may get the urge to sleep in when you know you do not have to head to the office early in the morning. But if you are not hitting the productivity level you want, it could be helpful to get up early. Make a cup of coffee or tea and dig right into your email inbox or that big assignment you have been putting off. You might be surprised at how much you are able to do when your house is quiet.
Tip 4: Take a Break
It might seem counterintuitive, but taking breaks to increase productivity gives your mind and body time to recharge. You should stand up every hour or so and take the time to refill your water bottle or pet your dog or cat. Two or three times a day, extend these breaks to twenty minutes and spend time with the kids, or talk to your partner.
Tip 5: Eliminate Digital Distractions
More likely than not, you do not check your social media much at the office, but at home it is fair game. This can be a hard habit to break, and you can easily lose an hour or more to scrolling through various apps. To combat this, remove social media platforms from your computer bookmarks and log out of your accounts. Disable notifications on your phone and put it in another room when you are trying to work.
Tip 6: Check Your Email at Certain Times
This tip only works if your job does not require you to be on your email 24/7. If that is the case, designate certain times when you will check your inbox. Otherwise if you constantly have your email in view, any new message can be a distraction. You want to avoid disrupting your focus like this, and tending to emails is more efficient when tackled in chunks.
Tip 7: Make a Daily To-Do List
Accountability helps with productivity, so making a daily to-do list is helpful. At the end of the workday, jot down what you need to do the next day, detailing things like deadlines. Include any meetings or calls in which you are needed, and be ready to pull up your list bright and early the next day.
Tip 8: Multitask When You Can
Working from home means you will have other things to attend to during the day. Perhaps you need to feed your pet, do a load of dishes, or run the laundry. Try to find opportunities to multitask where possible, such as refilling your coffee and running a load of laundry at the same time. These tasks are generally easy to work into your routine and will ultimately save you time and aggravation later.
Tip 9: Try Meal Prepping
Since you are working from home, there are no vending machines in sight, and you probably cannot walk down the street to the cafe either. Mealtime responsibilities probably fall on you or someone in your household, so meal prepping is a great way to eliminate the stress of figuring out what you are going to eat. Meal prepping can be accomplished by preparing meals in bulk on Sunday and storing them in the fridge. This can be especially helpful if you have a lot of people living under one roof, because not everybody wants to eat at the same time. This gives more flexibility and options for people to eat when they are ready.
Tip 10: Have Office Hours If You Can
If your employer allows it, set hours when you will be available by phone, email, or online while you work. Your professional responsibilities are important, but so is time with your family and relaxation. You must set reasonable boundaries on both professional and personal levels in order to be truly successful.
The Bottom Line
Working from home can come with a unique set of challenges, but establishing a schedule that enforces clear expectations and boundaries can help. Removing distractions, making a to-do list, and giving yourself time to decompress are all ways that you can potentially increase your productivity and hit those deadlines. And that will make your boss happy, but you will also be happy with yourself.
