Tips For Working From Home
Working from home is a dream for many. Being able to wake up when you want, dress how you please and wear your messy hair with no shame, in a space where you feel comfortable would seem like the best thing ever.
However, it's all fun and games until your dear neighbour discovers a newfound passion for construction and fires up a series of drills and other power tools, or your cat or dog won't leave you alone in peace.
Some people were made for the "work-from-home" life and don't need an office environment to be productive and savour in the ambience of their homes. Whereas, others have to work extra hard to remain focused and on task.
Whether you refer to it as telecommuting, telework, teleworking, working from home, mobile work, remote work, or flexible workplace - it all refers to a work arrangement in which employees do not commute or travel to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or store.
Teleworkers' go-to essentials consist of Wi-Fi, laptop or tablet computers and smartphones. Some like to work from the comfort of their homes, while others choose to change it up a bit and work from coffee shops.
According to a Reuters poll, approximately one in five workers around the globe telecommute frequently and nearly 10% work from home every day.
As much as there are freedom and bliss in working from home, it also poses a challenge for some. But we've come to your rescue and compiled a shortlist of tips for our stay at home workers to help them accomplish their goals.
Get Started Early
The commute to some office jobs is enough to get you up and ready. However, when working from home, transitioning from your bed to your desk might seem unusually demanding and cause you to prolong your feelings of sluggishness. The key to overcoming this is to immediately get immersed in your work as soon as you wake up. Starting your projects ASAP is a way to keep making progress throughout the day.
Set A Timer
When working from home, efficiency is critical, especially if you have a dense list of tasks to complete and less than eight hours to achieve them. Calculate the time required to complete each task and set a timer accordingly (Don't just look at the clock). Something about the timer counting down pushes us to work harder and faster.
Reward Yourself in Little Ways
If you're the type that gets enthusiastic about rewards, then this tip should be helpful. After completing a task, you should treat yourself to something nice, yet something that won't throw off the work groove that you've built up. This gives you a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that should motivate you to complete other tasks at hand.
Make it Harder for You to Mess Around on Social Media
To counteract this distraction, you should either log out of all your accounts or use the incognito option on your browser where you're not signed in to any of your accounts. This adds a little bit more work to getting online and may deter you from scrolling your time away.
Capitalize on Your Most Productive Times
We know that you're not going to be at your best throughout the day, your energy may rise and fall occasionally. However, when working from home, it's essential to know when you're at your peak and when you're not.
Save your more laborious tasks for when you're most productive and in the best headspace and knock out the smaller tasks at slower points.
Plan Before You Work
Sometimes taking time out to organize your tasks could decrease the time you actually spend doing said task. When you set plans to tackle your work; it gives you control and a bit of confidence to do what you have to do. Commit to an agenda that has all tasks outline but allow it to change if necessary. Try to solidify your schedule a day before to make it more official so that you'll stick to it when you wake up.
Don't Stay Home
If you're at home and you feel overwhelmed and can't get tasks done, remove yourself from the environment, be it by going for a walk or taking your work elsewhere. Try telecomputing outdoors, go to a coffee shop, a library or any other Wi-Fi enabled environment that can give you an office type of energy to stimulate your productivity.