WFH? Quick tips on staying productive while working remote

The tech industry was gradually moving this way already, but with the coronavirus outbreak, working from home is now a fact of life for millions of people. For those that aren’t use to it, working remotely poses some new challenges, staying productive being the main one. For businesses, that’s the main concern with having a work from home policy: will employees stay on-task and communicate effectively when not face-to-face?

As someone who’s worked remotely regularly the last 5 years, here’s some quick pointers I’ve learned to help me stay productive when working from a couch.

Don’t sleep in

This one’s always tempting because you have extra time not having to commute into work. But your body works in a rhythm and when you start waking up later than usual, you’ll feel even more fatigued when you do actually roll out of bed. This means you’ll start working earlier than you’re used to, but you can take yourself off work earlier if you’re counting the hours.

Tidy up

This is for both you and your workspace. Take a shower and get dressed in the morning. If you stay in your pajamas with matted hair, you won’t be in a good state of mind to be productive. Same idea if you have a messy room or office. Take the time to organize things and clean that layer of dust that’s been accumulating over the last 3 months. I don’t know the science behind it, but having this mental clarity makes it 10 times easier to get things done the rest of the day.

Plan physical activities

Once you get into a productive groove, it can sometimes be hard to pull yourself away. Set calendar events or alarms to remind yourself to do physical things throughout the day. Walk your dog, go for a jog, do some bodyweight exercises. This gives you a mental break while also boosting endorphins, something that might be in short supply the longer you stay indoors.

Stay engaged on meetings and calls

With no one being in the same room, it’s easy to — literally and figuratively — dial it in for remote meetings. However, if everyone can stay engaged, it’s amazing how much better you’ll feel once the call is over. If you work from home enough, you can start to get paranoid about what other people think about your productivity. On a good remote call, everyone gets a chance to talk about what they’ve been working on and get on the same mental wavelength.

That’s it, nothing too complex. There’s obviously a lot of content like this floating around these days, so I tried to not tread on the usual tips like blocking distracting websites. The theme here is that productivity is a state of mind that’s normally encouraged by going into a workplace. But with these tips, there’s no reason you can’t train yourself to have the same mentality at home.