Tips for Staying Productive While Working From Home

Most of us probably work from home, which is wonderful and a serious perk of running your own biz. Until your dog decides it’s time to throw up everywhere or your neighbour decides that now is the time to renovate their bathroom that has a shared wall with your office. With life happening and summer here, staying ✨ productive ✨ can be somewhat challenging at times. This week let’s dive into how to stay productive while working from home, or the beach or your car! 

Tell Your Housemates 

Make sure your roommates, partner, parents and dogs (well maybe not them) respect your working hours. Just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you’re available. If you’re co-working with another remote worker be sure to communicate when you’re having meetings, any quiet times you need and generally how you like to work. If you’ve got children at home or just a dog that’s very vocal, we suggest investing in a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones so your workflow isn’t disrupted.

Take Consistent Breaks!

Working in the same spot you sleep in can make you feel guilty about taking breaks. Remember when you worked in an office and would just pop out for a coffee or have random cooler convos? Well, don’t get so lost in your computer that you forget to take short breaks. Rather than opening up your phone for a scroll, get outside! Take a walk with your pooch, friend or just by yourself. Getting outside in the natural light and fresh air does wonders for your mental health. Plus, by giving yourself consistent breaks when you’re back at your desk working you get more done than if you’re just staring at your screen for hours without taking a moment to yourself. 

Create a Solid Routine

Staying productive means staying consistent and not burning out. To protect your mental health while working from home, it’s important to set clear working hours. We love setting our days out in our G-cal or our Productivity Method planners, that way we know exactly what we need to get done and time block accordingly. By setting clear working hours you aren’t tempted to just quickly do something for work all the time, which will eventually lead to burnout. We like to shut our laptops at the same time each day and shut the door to our office so that the work day actually feels complete. One of our team members Sara lives in a van, which means working, sleeping and eating in the same room. If you’re like Sara and work from your room, she suggests going out for a walk at the end of your work day. This clear routine helps Sara’s mind switch off of work and into personal time. 

Choose a Dedicated Workspace 

Just because you aren’t working in an office doesn’t mean you can’t create an ‘office’. Rather than lying on the sofa, creating space for a desk or a home office is crucial for maintaining productivity. By choosing a dedicated workspace you’re tricking your brain into thinking and being productive in that space, this will also help you to switch off at the end of the day. 

Make it Harder to Use Social Media

This still applies to our Social Media Managers out there! Social media is designed to make it easy for us to open and browse quickly. Which ends in us stuck in a scroll hole. This is a killer for your productivity. 

To combat this, make it harder to access your personal social accounts. You can either log out so the act of physically logging in makes it a harder barrier to entry or set time restrictions through your phone. We also suggest turning off your social media notifications during your working hours so they don’t pull you out of a workflow. 

Work When You’re at Your Most Productive.

Nobody sprints through their work from morning to evening — your motivation will naturally ebb and flow throughout the day. Knowing what hours of the day you work best is obviously personal, but being a freelancer often means flexibility around your schedule so take your ebbs and flows into consideration and schedule your day around that. 

To capitalize on your most productive periods, save your more challenging tasks for when you know you’ll be in the right headspace for them. Use slower points of the day to knock out the easier logistical tasks on your plate.

Focus on One Distraction.

There’s an expression out there that says, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” The bizarre but true rule of productivity is that the busier you are, the more you’ll do. It’s like Newton’s law of inertia: If you’re in motion, you’ll stay in motion. If you’re at rest, you’ll stay at rest. And busy people are in fast enough motion that they have the momentum to complete anything that comes across their desks. Plan out what you’ll be working on ahead of time. We love to use our G-Cal to time block and our Productivity Method planners to know exactly what we need to work on today. If you can we love to plan out our week on a Sunday night or Monday morning so we know precisely what we’re getting done throughout the week. Plus it makes it feel more official when you wake up and get started.

Use the Pomodoro Technique.

One of our top tips for staying productive is to take breaks, but that can be challenging sometimes working remotely. So we suggest using the Pomodoro Method to help you. In the traditional Pomodoro Method, you set a 25-minute timer, pick a specific task you can finish in that time, get rid of any distractions, start the clock, and complete your task. We love it because it creates a sense of urgency and doesn’t let a single task take longer than it should. 

Pretend Like you are Going into the Office.

The mental association you make between work and an office can make you more productive, and there’s no reason that feeling should be lost when working remotely. I know we all love working in our PJs, but the simple act of changing your clothes into something more serious will give your brain the signal it’s time to work! So when working from home, we like to do all the things you’d do to prepare for an office role: Set your alarm, make (or get) coffee, and wear nice clothes.

Don’t Stay at Home.

Some days you just need to get out of the house and work in a fresh place. Take your laptop and get out of the house. Coffee shops, libraries, public lounges, coworking spaces, and similar Wi-Fi-enabled spaces can help you simulate the energy of an office so you can stay productive even when you don’t sit in an official workplace. Plus, having all the people buzzing around you is great for that bit of social interaction. 

Look After Yourself 

It’s impossible to be productive if you’re not feeling your best, working from home means sometimes we neglect our well-being. Make sure you’re setting dates to interact with people irl. We love to spend one day a week co-working with friends or taking a walk or surfing after work with them. Spending a lot of time at home often means we neglect meal times, instead of ordering DoorDash constantly we suggest meal prepping your lunch the night before so while you’re in work mode you can just grab it and go.