Working from home can be chill and more relaxed when you do not have to see your boss every day but it can also cause you to be easily distracted when the working space at home is not guaranteed without sufficient facilities. In this article, we FittingChairs will share with you some tips of how to stay focused and productive when working from home.
How to Stay Focused and Productive When Working from Home?
If you are struggling to focus working from home, below are some tips to help you regain focus and maintain productivity.
Set A Daily List with A “Top 3”
When you work from home and have to deal with a huge amount of tasks, both big and small ones, it is likely to cause you lose the focus on one task or, worse than that, all of them.
To keep yourself on track, you should set a list of your daily top 3 items or tasks. This list will include the tasks you need to do. You should have this list reviewed when you start your day. It is crucial to prioritize your tasks in one day to specify which you should finish first and which you can complete later.
Your daily list of top 3 should be the tasks that you must have them completed every day before ending a working day.
Build A Dedicated Home Office Work Space
Having your own dedicated workspace at home is really important. It does not only provide you a sufficient and professional working area but also gives you motivation as if you are staying in a real office to work.
A home office can assist you in transitioning mentally into the working mode and keep yourself away distractions from household tasks.
You will understand how distracted you can be if you have to work in a shared space where many people are there. The situation can be fixed if you get your own workspace.
Furthermore, working in a home office will help you stay organized and when you need to find things, it is easier.
Therefore, let’s build your own home office the quicker the better if you do not have one. The design is not necessarily so magnificent. You just need to have it styled in the way you like so that you will have inspiration to stay working in there.
Establish Working Hours
The third tip is establishing your working hours.
When you are self-employed or a freelancer, it’s alluring to work around the clock. But it is not good if you do that for long. You should try to stick to regular working hours as much as possible.
By establishing working hours and sticking to them, you can stay more focused and avoid distractions. When your daily routines are established, your focus will be improved.
Some people work their at-home jobs like the 9-to-5 ones to gain more focus as if they commute to work every day.
Establish A Daily Routine or Ritual
The forth tip is building your daily routines or rituals. These can be the sources of your working inspiration, especially when you work from home.
Establishing daily routines or rituals is greatly important when you work from home. The reason is when you work at your own home, it is easier for you to be distracted or you will feel so relaxed and underestimate the deadlines. Being negligent can result in loss in productivity significantly.
When building your daily routines, you should set time to start your work each day, time to take breaks and time for exercises and other activities specifically.
By setting a list of daily routines like this, you can keep yourself stay focused better and your productivity can also be maintained when you have everything you need to do listed in details.
You can use apps or calendar to create the list and keep track of it. If you use apps, you can make use of them even if you are outside to run some errands. If you use calendar, you can keep it on your desktop.
Limit Social Media Using
Using social media seems not a big deal when it comes to challenges for people working from home. However, in fact, it is the reverse situation.
It is true that phone and laptop are the two necessary equipment for working but if you do not know how to use them smartly or how much time you should spend on them, your phone and laptop can be the reasons causing you lose focus.
It is very easy for you to pick up your phone and scroll up and down all the social media sites you use and check if there are any updates or notifications. If you find yourself when reading these lines, then it is time for you to start limiting your habit of using social media in order not to negatively impact your working performance.
You can choose to set a timer for the time you use social media or you can be your own reminder. Only checking social media sites when you have finished one or some prioritized tasks is also a good way to try. It is like a reward allowing you to take a break from work.
Use Timers and Productivity Apps
Setting a timer for yourself or using a productivity tracking app is a helpful way helping you stay on track. These two ways can be applied at the same time with establishing working hours.
A productivity tracking app can help to divide your project into smaller chunks so you can find it easier to keep track of the progress.
Pomodoro, Todoist, Trello, Asana and Evernote are some of the techniques and apps really popular and effective you should try.
Have A Calendar
You need to have a calendar to create your own working hours, your daily rituals and keep track of all of them.
These days, you can use both traditional and digital calendar.
To use a calendar as its best for creating routines or any list of things you want to do, you at first need to know how you are going to work, at what times in a day your productivity is at the highest level.
Arranging tasks in a suitable and feasible way is vital to make sure you can finish them in a particular timeline.
Don’t forget to set time for breaks throughout the day reasonably. You will need time to recharge your battery or motivation for work.
Take Scheduled Breaks
After working for a certain amount of time, what your mind and body will need is taking some rest.
When you work from home, you need to schedule your breaks smartly since you work alone and there is no one next to you to remind you of having breaks from work for some time in a day.
Getting up, stretching your legs, having a cup of tea, going outside maybe to the balcony if any to breathe some fresh air and so on are some ways you can apply to be free from work for a while.
Do not underestimate short breaks because they give you a few minutes of downtime here, which is critical to maintain your energy and concentration.
Remember to set a timer for your breaks, to take breaks and get back to work at the right time.
Use Background Noise
It might not be strange or novel for some people when using background noise is one of the methods of how to stay focused working from home. On YouTube, there are a lot of videos of Lo-Fi music or some other kinds of sounds helping to concentrate.
These sounds can be used as background noise while you are working. You will see how much effective they are in assisting you to stay focused on your projects. It is said that they have a positive impact to your brain and therefore your concentration level.
Stay Active
One more tip of how to stay focused working from home is to stay active. This is important when you work both in an office and at home.
You can make use of short breaks to stay active by getting up, stretching your muscles, going around to boost blood circulation in your body.
When your physical health is taken care of, your mental health will also be better. You will enhance your focus ability, energy level and at the end, your productivity.
You can consider to use an under desk bike while you sit at a desk to work. It can help to strengthen your leg muscles and improve your blood flow as well as your posture. An under desk bike still has lots of other benefits.
Eat Energizing Food
To have energy to work, it is essential to eat enough and healthily. You should eat protein-rich snacks and food in short breaks from work to keep yourself stay conscious and sharp.
Keep starchy foods away since they can make you feel sleepy and heavy.
You can have small meals of boiled eggs, fruits, nuts and salad. These menus are nutritious and healthy. Smoothies or juice is also good for your health. However, keep the sugar level as low as possible. Opt for sugar-free products if you can. Obtaining sugar can make you feel good but it actually can damage your concentration.
Drink Lots of Water
Stay hydrated while working is nothing less important. On average, an adult should drink less or more than 2 liters of water per day.
You can divide 2 liters into many small cups of water to drink at different time in a day. Set a timer on your phone or any app in case you worry you will forget to drink.
Drinking water will also help you to avoid sugary juices and caffeine beverage.
Sleep Enough
Having enough sleep is the last tip of how to stay focused working from home we want to share with you. It seems easy but it’s actually not and many people have difficulty with it.
Sleeping enough helps you to have a fresh mind at the beginning of the day to be ready for work. Sleeping is one of the best ways to give your mind and body recharge after a whole day.
Averagely, an adult is adviced to sleep for 7-8 hours per night to get the most vital energy for the next morning. If you want to work with full of your productivity then a sleep of 7-8 hours is what you need.
Why Can’t I Focus When Working from Home?
When working from home, you have to deal with more issues which lead to loss of focus than you think.
If you live alone, things are easier but if you live with your family, you raise pets, they will become distraction sources for you.
Or the distraction source can come from yourself when you find the working environment at home more relaxed and just want to keep procrastinating on your work. The notifications from your social media can also make you find it hard to focus on your projects.
Biggest Distractions When Working from Home
There are lots of things which can turn to distractions for you when working at home, from the cooking to the laundry.
Your family members or your roommates speaking too loud or making noises is another type of distraction. If you have kids, you need to keep a good eye on them and make sure they can be quiet while you work since it is normally hard for children to be silent.
So are pets. If you raise a cat, it might keep quiet better than a dog. Or if you have a bird, its chirping sound might also cause you distraction.
Working from home has benefits but you need to consider these distractions to find ways to deal with them.
How to Prioritize and Stay Motivated When Working from Home?
To prioritize and stay motivated to work at home, creating a checklist of your tasks is what you should do. List out what you need to complete, arrange them in a reasonable order.
Take a break after getting one task done and consider that a reward for your effort. You will feel you have made progress and then have more motivation.
Keep your body active enough to not feel stiff after working for long.
And if possible, create your own professional workspace to give you full feeling of a true home office to work.
How to Manage Working from Home Full Time?
Boundaries
Setting clear boundaries is important to get success when working from home. If you work in an office, you have these boundaries set for you but when working from home, you have to set them yourself.
You need to make sure you will not be disturbed by other people or your pets in your living area while you are working.
Get Organized
Understand what you need to do, check all the equipment you need for work and have a space to work productively.
Set A Schedule
When you work from home, it’s not that you have been given the freedom to work whenever you want. Actually, it is critical to create a schedule and follow it as closely as possible. This will assist you in being focused and productive.
Why is Working From Home So Difficult?
Coming with lots of distractions is one of the reasons why working from home is difficult.
If you don’t have a dedicated home office inside your house, it also causes hardship since you might not have enough facilities to support your work.
How to Improve Productivity While Working at Home?
There are various ways which are suitable for each one of us. Each individual has their own situation, working space conditions and even the different features of their work.
However, we have gathered some common ways as followings:
- Set up a dedicated working space
- Take a break after a certain amount of time spent for work
- Create your working schedule
You should be able to increase your productivity while working from home if you follow these tips. Changing from working in an office to your home, it might take time for you to adapt. Just be patient and you will see the result.
To conclude, working from home is not so simple as everyone would usually think but you need to have some tips to keep your efficient performance. Hope all of the tips of how to stay focused when you’re working from home we have shared can come in handy for you. Follow FittingChairs to know more tips as well as helpful equipment you need to work from home.
