When working from home is really bad for productivity!

Your work environment influences your state of mind

I like working on the couch. It works really well for many things: Finding different pieces of interesting content, fleshing out new ideas, sharing stuff I like, responding to posts that engage me in that moment. It works really badly for other stuff: finalising a post or a presentation, doing admin stuff that requires focus and concentration, developing proposals. These are things I will be very inefficient at if sitting on the couch.

All the “couch” activities have one thing in common: I need to let my attention wander without focusing too much on one thing. This state works great to find new and innovative information and it is also great to connect the dots… how is some topic I try to develop related to others? How can I present an idea in a way that engages my audience, that helps them experience it the same way I do?

Now, when I need to focus to take all this information and ideas I gathered and turn them into some coherent presentation, blog post, process for a coaching session and so forth, then I need a different state, and slugging on the couch is not getting me there. I get distracted easily and cannot get the actual work done.

Your work environment influences your state of mind

Here is a table with the different types of work I do, categorised by the type of attention they require:

All the activities in the OPEN Attention column align really well with me working from home, and more importantly from the couch, but the activities in the Focussed attention column, are just not getting done in that environment. For those I need a space without too many distractions, a place that feels like work (in the no-fun sense of the word)! That place is not my couch and it is also not at home. For me that place is a co-working space, where I can find a corner, put on my headphones and set myself up in a way that screams: DO NOT DISTURB!

There is not one environment to be productive. The appropriate environment depends on the type of attention needed to get the task done!

Although I try to avoid it, sometimes I have to get some focussed attention work done at home. What I do then, is to try and get it done first thing in the morning, sitting at the desk of our home office. Before sitting down, I will get myself something to drink and a snack (so I do not have to go out of the room in case I get thirsty or hungry) and close the door. I also try to get these tasks done when I am alone at home, so no kids running and shouting outside of the room, and no wife, who might pop her head in to ask something or claim the desk for her.

Why divide work by type of attention required?

I looked at a few different ways of cutting the work cake: social vs. non-social tasks, length of time needed to get something done, different projects, … None of these worked as a means to figure out how my environment influences my productivity.

Take for example Social vs. non-social: not all meetings are the same. as you can see from above table, there are meeting where I need to be focussed to move the group I am meeting with towards a decision, which is different from a meeting to exchange ideas or to network.

It finally clicked when I started the first draft of this article some 5–6 weeks ago. Writing about the connection between environment and productivity made me realize what the crucial difference between couch and office tasks was, type of attention needed to get a specific task done!

How can you use this insight for your own benefit?

You might have similar needs to mine and can implement this one-to-one, but more likely will you have to figure out for yourself, which structure, and environment works for which type of work.

Here is a short process, you can go through to get started:

1. What are the activities I engage in?
2. What state of mind do they require to get done?
3. Then for each category, observe under what circumstances you are most productive. Do this for a week or 2 noting down when you were particularly productive and when not, and where and how you worked.
4. Then look back at your notes and see if you can spot a pattern. This pattern is your main work structure!

I am curious to know what you find and also if type of attention is the dimension you end up using for this.

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