Working from Home: How to Motivate Yourself
Working from home comes with a lot of perks: it allows you to be your own boss, set your own hours and play by your own rules. That said, being in charge also requires persistent, stoic self-discipline that can be quite hard to maintain, especially in the age of Netflix. With no managers lurking over your shoulder, no one can restrict your propensity for procrastination — except for you. Here are a few tips on how to stay motivated and get to work instead of binging on Friends:
Create a schedule
Clear as day, and yet so true: to stay on track (and to know where you are heading), you’ve got to make up a schedule that will reflect your goals, the steps required to achieve these goals, and most of importantly — the deadlines. Following a schedule also means that you have wake up at a set time each day and get to work at a certain time, which is crucial to your productivity. You can even follow standard business hours if you feel like doing it. Organizing your daily routine is hugely important — it will liberate you from the disgusting “hangover student starting to write an essay two hours before the deadline” feeling.
Don’t set workplace hygiene aside
It’s hard to be motivated if you work in your underwear. To be productive, you should define your workplace hygiene. Don’t work where you sleep — work at your desk, and try to keep it clean: working at a messy desk can reduce your productivity. Put on some actual clothes — wearing lazy pajamas makes you feel lazy. Many freelancers consider these things unimportant, when in reality details like that affect your mindset like nothing else.
Turn your distractions into rewards
OK, you’ve finally got to work. But how come you haven’t checked your Facebook inbox for almost half and hour? And then there’s also Twitter. And Reddit. By the time your working day was supposed to end, you’ve become one of the world’s biggest experts on the history of ancient India (God bless you, Wikipedia), but for some reason this doesn’t make you closer to getting the job done. The truth is, even if you are the most dedicated worker of our time, you can’t always stay away from distractions. So allow yourself some of these distractions, but perceive them as a reward for the the tasks completed: for instance, you can make small social media breaks every two hours or so, or watch an episode of a your favorite TV show after achieving a certain goal. But don’t get carried away — moderation is everything.
Keep in mind that everybody is different — you can customize these strategies for your own working style and see what things work for you personally and what don’t. Whenever you feel like slacking, just remember that working from home is a gift of God: if you happen to belong to the kind of profession that allows you to do that, you’re already luckier than most people.
