Tips To Be Productive When Working From Home

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When working from home, it’s important to be productive. There are opportunities where remote working is offered by the company, or it might be that you have a job that’s home-based. Either way, it’s good to get yourself into a routine and to practice certain things that can help keep you motivated to work hard. Here are some tips to be productive when working from home so that you can get everything done for the day that’s important.

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Start With The Most Difficult Tasks

Firstly, it’s important to start with your most difficult tasks. Usually, many of us will tend to go with something easier, to begin with, and work up to the more challenging or hard to complete tasks. The only problem with that is that when you’re approaching these last few tasks, you can become demotivated to even do them. However, at the start of the day is usually where you are feeling the most productive and have the most energy. With that being said, it’s worth taking advantage of this by doing the tasks that are going to be the most time-consuming or those jobs that you may find to be quite mammoth tasks to do. 

When working from home, you’ll have a lack of leadership, and so it’s important to stay focused on everything that needs to get done. These most difficult tasks are likely to be more of the important ones, so try to get them done and out of the way first so that you can have a more enjoyable afternoon.

Take Breaks

Regular breaks are important because they can be needed in order to give yourself some rest before heading back into your working day. These can be in the form of five or ten-minute breaks to get a cup of tea or your hourly lunch, where you can sit anywhere else other than your desk to take your mind off work and to switch off completely. Too many employees will often eat at their desks, and that can be something that’s hard to get out of said habit. It’s important that when you’re working from home, you still give yourself the breaks you need to feel energized and ready to get back to work when your time is up. If it helps, you could always time your breaks so that it goes off when you need to take a break from the work. 

Structure Your Day 

Structuring your day is important because it can be easy to forget what you need to do next, and all of sudden, you’ve found that you had things that needed to be done. It can be frustrating when that happens, and so having some form of structure to your day is important. Think about what works best for you as for some, it might be an on-going to-do list in the order in which it needs doing. For others, it might be setting out a daily plan that you lay out each hour and what you’ll need to do. It depends on what you find works for you and what will make you the most productive.

By scheduling your day, it can make it a lot more motivating to see you tick things off the list and to finish the day feeling like you’ve accomplished something.

Turn Down The Lighting On Your Devices

When it comes to your health, it’s important that you’re giving yourself breaks where needed but also putting things in place to look after your health in general. This can be having the right set up in terms of your monitor stand, any footrest requirements, and a proper computer chair. You also might want to think about getting glasses to block out blue light so that you avoid sore eyes and headaches. When it comes to our screens, they can be quite harsh on our eyes and so it’s worth knowing what you can do to help with this. Turning down the screen’s brightness can be helpful. For example, it’s worth knowing how to use Chrome dark mode as this can be a little easier for your eyes to look at when it starts getting into the early evening. 

You might also just want to turn down the brightness of your screens, in general, to make it easier for your eyes to view for long periods of time.

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Have A Dedicated Workspace

A dedicated workspace is important when working from home because otherwise, you can end up blurring the spaces of your home. It’s good to set yourself up in a room that’s dedicated as a study or office space and if not, then you want to pick anywhere other than your living room and bedroom. These are two spaces that you don’t want to start getting confused with working spaces. Even if a day of working in bed sounds good, if you end up having a bad day or overworking yourself, you’re then going to see this space in a negative light. It’s also important to have a space in which you can lock yourself away from the rest of the home. Sharing the working space with others in your household can be distracting and not something you want when you’re trying to be productive.

Get Outside

Working from home can be exhausting, especially when you’re spending the majority of your day and week in the house. As much as you might enjoy working from home, it can end up getting monotonous, and in some cases, can give you a case of cabin fever. That’s why it’s important that you’re getting out and taking a bit of time in the outdoors to reset your batteries. Sometimes, being cooped up inside is not helpful when you’re trying to stay productive. Get yourself outdoors for perhaps half an hour just to stretch your legs and walk around the block.

Working from home can be productive as long as you’ve trained yourself to do so. Use these tips to get the most out of your working days when working in your home.

Sarah x