You’ve Slept While Working From Home, Haven’t You? Here are 6 Tips to Boost Your Productivity
“You are still in bed at ten and work began at eight.” I am sure many of you recognize the phrase from the “F.R.I.E.N.D.S.” theme song. Now, when many of us are working from home, these 12 words seem more valid than ever.
If you haven’t taken a nap while working from home at least once, then you can skip reading this. But for those of you, who stayed in bed for “just 5 more minutes in the morning”, this article might be helpful to you.
There is a reason why people are less productive when working from home. And it is a very simple one — they don’t have supervision. From a very early stage of our lives, we are used to being told what to do. It was by our teachers, our parents, and then our bosses.
But now, maybe for the first time in our lives, we are in a situation where we do our responsibilities from home, with only partial supervision. While this situation turns out positive for some self-driven people, many of us struggle. I was one of those people.
I found myself demotivated, I was waking up late in the morning, I was distracted easily, I found it hard to manage my time, and I even started procrastinating. Luckily enough, I realized that quickly and started working on those problems.
Here are 6 tips that could help you handle such struggles and make you more productive and efficient while working from home.
1. Self-discipline
You are going to say that self-discipline is not built in a day and you are correct.
It doesn’t happen with a magic trick. However, if you set a few habits for yourself, the process of becoming self-disciplined might feel a lot more natural.
First of all, you should set clear goals for yourself. Like a to-do list for the day. Make sure you write down your goals — be it on a piece of paper, your mobile phone, or a sticky note, just have it in front of you as a reminder.
At the end of the day, check out how you did. Be honest with yourself, and admit your mistakes or failures, everyone can have a bad day, but as long as you understand it, you can quickly come back to the right path.
Believe me, if you accomplish all your daily goals, you’ll feel truly fulfilled at the end of the day.
If you have someone you live with, you could tell them about the assignments you are working on and the daily goals you’ve set for yourself. You wouldn’t want to go and tell them how unproductive your day was. That would keep you motivated to finish everything you have planned for the day. Again, just be honest with yourself.
It’s normal to feel lost at times, the important thing is to keep going and find your way in the given circumstances. As Viktor Frankl put it:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
2. Self-motivation
I’ll continue with another quote — “Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something”. The great Andrew Carnegie said that.
The question you should ask yourself is what you want from your job. What are the skills you would like to acquire — do you want to improve your communication skills or analytical skills, do you want to develop your interpersonal abilities, or enhance your management skills?
The possibilities are countless. Once you understand what are your inspirations, you can see every task as an opportunity to develop yourself as a professional.
Seek success in what you do, instead of trying to avoid failure. Do your job because you want, not because you have to. The change is coming shortly after that.
Communication with yourself is of extreme importance if you’d like to remain self-motivated. Motivated people engage themselves in positive self-talk.
Next time you perform a task in your job, ask yourself a few questions. For example, what knowledge or experience can you obtain by performing this task, what are the lessons you could learn and how is this going to help you in the future? Just keep in mind that you have to stay positive. By answering these questions, you’ll find a personal reason to complete the task, consequently, you’ll be motivated to do it.
3. Leave your PJs out of it
Seriously, get dressed in the morning. PJs and sleeping are strongly connected and that, believe it or not, has an impact on your mind.
You’d be more likely to feel sleepy when wearing your PJs, so, as comfy as they are, keep them out of your workday. You’ll feel much better and ready to work when you get dressed in the morning.
I won’t go strongly about what to wear, at the end of the day, you are in your own home. However, whenever you have an important meeting or video conference, choose business-casual apparel. This will boost your confidence and make you look more professional.
4. Find the perfect workspace
It goes without saying that working while lying in bed is not an option. It makes you feel really sleepy and hence unproductive. You should find yourself a comfortable spot in your house or apartment where you can stay focused.
That means no background TV noise, no children running around (that’s a toughie), or any other distractions. It’s best if you have a separate room that you could turn into your home office, but even if you don’t, you could still make it work. Just make it feel like you are in the office.
Organize your workspace in a professional manner, bring with you a notepad, sticky notes, and staplers, and have your stress ball if you will. The bottom line is to design yourself a place that resembles an office environment and keeps you away from distractions.
5. Plan beforehand
This is a pretty common practice and it’s very helpful even if you don’t work from home. And it’s very simple too.
All you have to do is to open your laptop and see what meetings you have scheduled for the next day. Then think of what other tasks you have and try to organize your day beforehand. It should take no more than 5 minutes.
The good thing about it is that you’ll sleep on it and wake up the next morning with a clear plan in your head.
6. Try to keep regular working hours
Sometimes it may seem convenient to postpone a task for later. It happened to me to think that since I am at home, I’ll rest a couple of hours after work and then finish “that task” after working hours when nobody is rushing me. How that worked out for me? It didn’t.
In those situations, I was leaving the tasks for the next day, which made me stay behind schedule. This was a pure form of procrastination. My advice to you is, even if you have the opportunity to do a couple of small tasks in the evening, try to do the better of your work within your working hours.
This will make you keep your schedule, and be more organized and you won’t feel guilty spending time with your family, or thinking of the unfinished work.
I hope this article can help you better handle the current situation without making your career or personal life suffer. I’ll finish with a quote:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. — Charles Darwin
