How to Work Productively and Comfortably From Home: Tips From Our Experts
Let’s imagine that you are a winner in life, you know how to make the most difficult bargains, you can find the best TonyBet bonus code or you can easily buy a rare car at a low price, but the trouble is you have huge concentration problems? You can’t work at home because you are distracted by trivial things and just waste your time? You can fight it! Today we will tell you how to do it!
Stick To a Schedule
The main obstacle when working from home is procrastination says remote work consultant Melissa Smith. It’s comfortable at home, so there’s a desire and energy to do things that distract from work: cleaning, washing windows, checking the fridge, organizing photos, and so on.
It can be tempting to mix work time with housework tasks, especially if the day is not a “sandwich of meetings and deadlines.”
- If tasks involve independent work and no one is watching how work time is spent, you need to become a manager for yourself. You need to set your own working hours, deadlines, and breaks and stick to them no matter what.
- If focus problems arise, Smith suggests taking a 15-minute walk to recharge your energy and get back to work by setting periodic breaks of 10 to 15 minutes.
Create an Office at Home
The main rule of thumb that telecommuting consultant Lisset Sutherland recommends is to choose a space in your home and use it only for work.
To focus on things better and faster, put all work-related items in one place after work and during breaks, rather than scattering them around the house, says marketing manager Joe Seebeck.
- Children need to be taught that an adult should not be distracted while working. To make it easier, just print out a few pictures in green and red and make a sign out of them. Red will mean that the adult is busy.
- With animals, it’s harder: the dog will ask to go for a walk, and the cat will sit on his lap and keyboard. But a walk with the dog can be a break and a chance to get some fresh air, and for the cat, for example, you can find a heating pad or a warm place nearby.
Use Technology to Your Advantage
To interact with colleagues remotely, there are several apps categorized:
- Slack and Microsoft Teams for communicating with your team.
- Google Hangouts and Skype for face-to-face conversations.
- Zoom, Bluejeans, and Gather for video conferencing and multi-participant meetings.
Don’t Isolate Yourself Completely
One of the major benefits of working remotely is the ability to change your surroundings, says writer John Schadel.
If you live outside the quarantine area, you don’t have to work exclusively from home – you can change locations based on activities. For example, write texts at the kitchen table, work on emails at the coffee shop, and do administration at the bar.
Productivity Can Be Higher, but You Can’t Forget About Breaks
Many newcomers to remote work may notice that they have become more productive when working from home because they are not distracted by coworkers, conversations, and other events, and long meetings are easily replaced by email.
Increased productivity can increase rest time – by waiting for action from a colleague or if one’s tasks run out. That said, it can be tempting to work even harder to make up for your absence from the office – but you shouldn’t do that, lest you overwork and burn out, Adweek notes.
Make the Most of Telecommuting
Many people will have to go back to traveling to the office after the quarantine is lifted, so you should have fun and enjoy remote work while you have it, such as working only in your underwear.
You can use this time to show your kids, family, or roommates what you do during the workday.
- In the middle of the day, you can set aside an hour to make a healthy lunch or go to the gym.
- It’s more convenient to work at home, so you can have time to do not only the actual tasks but also the work ahead.
Pay attention to how much time is spent on tasks when working from home. If they are solved much faster, you can talk to your supervisor about your progress and offer to work remotely more often.