When working remotely - particularly from home - it's very easy to lose your focus and get distracted. The convenience that comes with working remotely is great, but the lack of productivity can mean that your work stretches on for much longer than necessary. Spending too much time on the same task can even bore you and result in burnout.
Maximizing productivity while working remotely is one of the challenges of remote work, but is quite easy to overcome.
Let's look at some tips for maximizing productivity while working from the living room that can boost your performance and keep you motivated throughout the day.
Increasing Productivity While Working From Home
Quiet Mornings
You'd be surprised how much a peaceful morning can impact your day. Many successful people in all sorts of industries have a quiet morning routine, where they work out and clear their heads for the day that lies ahead.
Of course, different things work for different people, and waking up earlier can tire you out earlier (especially if you sleep at a late hour). However, your mind is fresher in the early mornings when you can use the silence to meditate and self-reflect. Having some time for self-reflection can help you understand how you want to move on with your tasks and how to achieve your goals from where you are right now.
Quiet mornings also help with establishing a routine. Having a routine (especially in the mornings) is important to put you in the right mindset to work. If you wake up five minutes before you're expected at work and plop in front of the computer, it's no surprise that you wouldn't be very productive for the first few hours of the day.
Establish a routine where you wake up a bit earlier than your expected time, eat a healthy breakfast, and take some time for yourself before you start gearing up to begin your workday. It doesn't seem like much, but you'd be surprised by how much it can help with productivity.
Schedule Your Workday
We have different kinds of tasks to do during the workday. For example, you wouldn't be spending your whole day attending meetings, nor would you just be doing a lot of mentally tasking work the whole time. For most of us, it's usually a mix of meetings, heavy work, and casual work.
To maximize your productivity, you should schedule your workday around these things to make sure you are regulating all of them better.
With meetings, you don't always have a fixed time. Sometimes meetings are arranged based on the majority's convenience, and other times you are simply given a time. On the other hand, sometimes meeting times are fixed for the day and you have to schedule your work around that.
In such cases, you should assess what time of the day you are the most productive - that is, when you are most "in the zone" and have the least amount of distractions around you. If you get interrupted while working, it can take up to 30 minutes to get back into the rhythm.
That's why you should assess your workday, how much work you usually have, and how well you perform at different times of the day. Depending on this, you should schedule it yourself. Keep the most critical and mentally taxing tasks for the time of the day when you are most productive. Try to finish these tasks during this time, and then spend the rest of the day doing the less intense tasks and attending meetings.
This time will vary for different people. For early risers, this may be early morning, but if you're not a morning person, you may work better around midday. Whatever time you work best at, schedule important tasks for that part of the day and schedule everything else around it.
Time Management
This is arguably one of the biggest challenges that remote workers face. This is also true for in-office workers, but the problem escalates when working remotely because of the lack of regulation and boundaries.
You shouldn't need someone hanging over your head reminding you to do your work on time. Managing your tasks can be difficult, especially when there are a lot of them. However, there are many time management techniques you can use. One of these is to allocate specific intervals of time to each task. These should be short - say, about half an hour each.
Set the timer to make sure you work for that period of time and no more. Take a short break after that, and then go back to the next task. Try to finish each task within the time, but it's okay if you don't manage. Just don't waste time when the timer is on. It may also help if you keep a checklist.
Another way to manage time is to break up your tasks into shorter ones. Then assign shorter stretches of time to each sub-task. This way, you can feel more productive by crossing things off your checklist and still getting your work done.
Appropriate Workspace
You'd be surprised how much your workspace can affect your productivity.
For those who have a home office space set aside for themselves, this may not be as much of a problem (though it still can be!) but it becomes a bigger issue for people who have to set up a workspace in whatever existing space they have.
For a lot of people, this is just the dinner table or the living room.
Quiet Area
Ideally, you'd have a separate workspace, but this is not always possible. Not everyone can afford new furniture for a home office, and not everyone has the space for it either.
That's fine, but you should make sure your workspace is still appropriate to be working at. For example, you shouldn't be smack in the middle of everything else. If you have people walking around and talking loudly, you'd undoubtedly be distracted. If you have kids or pets running around, it can be even more distracting. Your workspace should be in a quiet area where you can focus on your tasks without being interrupted.
Ergonomics
Another thing to focus on is the ergonomics of your workspace. If you're working from your bed, for example, you are just asking for back, shoulder, and neck pain. In more serious situations, you may even end up suffering from arm or wrist pain that can start actively hindering your work.
Even if you don't have designated ergonomic furniture, you should try and use an ergonomic substitute. For example, use a table that keeps your computer at the right height for your arms, wrists, and neck. If you strain your body, no matter what you do, you won't be able to be productive.
Cleanliness
A cluttered workspace is bound to distract you. You may think you know exactly where everything is - and you probably do! - but just being in a cluttered space can make you frazzled when you need something and have to rummage around for it.
Messy, cluttered spaces are also simply not nice to be in. It's so much easier to work in a clean area where you have room to put your things and aren't constantly bumping into things.
The Flexispot Under Desk Cabinet is a useful accessory to have in such cases. Sometimes desks come with cabinets installed, but many others don't. This is especially true for desks that follow a minimalist aesthetic.
Without proper storage space, your workspace is bound to get cluttered. This cabinet is useful since it is installed directly on the desk board and can move with it. If you have a standing desk, you can easily take your things with you no matter what height you're working at.
Security concerns are also addressed since the cabinet has a 3-digit combination lock that can be customized. When you're not at your desk, you can simply lock the cabinet to keep anyone else from accessing your things.
The cabinet also has a large storage capacity. It has enough space for you to store your books, folders, and documents. You can even fit a small CPU in there! Being made of steel, it can bear the weight of heavier items as well and is durable.
Being fairly easy to assemble, you don't have to worry about having to struggle to set it up. All you have to do is attach the brackets that come with it to the tabletop. Then, once you've hung the cabinet, you can tighten the screws and you'd be done.
Though the cabinet is meant to be attached to a desk for easy access, you can also simply keep it somewhere else. If your workspace at home isn't appropriate to attach a cabinet (such as the dinner table) you can keep this cabinet in a more appropriate space nearby. This way, you have your items in easy access, while also being safe and secure.
