There’s no getting away from it, working from home (WFH) is here to stay. Or to phrase that slightly better – employers are going to be more flexible about how often you will have to go into the office.
However, working from home can be a challenge. More and more emails fill up our inboxes, Teams chat’s are pinging off every 5 minutes, and never-ending Zoom meetings are just a few of the everyday distractions.
It can be hard to stay productive at home. That’s why in this post we are going to look at 5 simple, yet incredibly powerful tips that will allow you to work from home more productively and impress your boss while remote working.
Get more sleep
The average person (should) spend up to around 30% of their lives sleeping. Sleep helps to rejuvenate the body every night to get it fresh and working efficiently for the following day.
However, a significant proportion of the population report struggling to get the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep each night. This number is only increasing with more and more people working later into the night as they are working from home.
If you want to get serious about being more productive at home you need to make sure you’re getting enough sleep. Working longer and longer may allow you to get more done in the short term, however, you will burn out over the longer term.
A great tip is to set a time that you go to sleep and wake up every day. Do this consistently over a period of time and your body will get used to it.
Eat well
By eating well I don’t mean eating lots, I mean eating nutritional food every single day.
In 1903 Thomas Edison said, “the doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”
He couldn’t have been more right. What we put into our bodies has a direct correlation to our performance and overall well-being.
Think of yourself as having to be a well-oiled machine. Much like a diesel car requires diesel to work efficiently, we all need to eat the right foods to work efficiently too.
Working from home should make it easier to make a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most office kitchens just have a microwave, you now have a whole kitchen at your disposal.
To be even more efficient try batch cooking some meals that will last you a few days. That way you can save time and just heat them up in the microwave when you need to.
Exercise often
Much like eating right is good for our body, regular exercise is also extremely good for our bodies, both physically and mentally.
Proper, consistent exercise is one of the most powerful drivers of our brain and nervous system. It’s commonly accepted that general movement is an important factor in the development of our nervous system.
Exercising often doesn’t mean that you have to start running half marathons every lunch break. However, you could start by building a habit of daily exercise by going for a half-an-hour walk every lunchtime.
Or a popular trend at the moment is the fake commute. If your commuting time was previously 30 minutes into the office every morning, use that ‘free’ time productively by going for a walk, or a cycle, a swim, or any other exercise you enjoy doing.
The key is to build a consistent habit that you can keep up over time.
Schedule your days
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. If you don’t run the day, the day will end up running you.
Working from home means there is probably a lot less structure to your day. You don’t have the commute, you don’t have the 1-hour break, no set time to leave, and so on.
It’s important that set a schedule for how and when you will do work at home. Set yourself a start time, preferably around the same time as you would start work in the office. Make sure you have a finish time that you can stick to at the end of the day most of the time.
The trick is to try and mimic what you do in the office as much as possible.
Time management techniques
For those reading this that are into self-development, you may well have heard of some time management techniques.
One of the most common is the Pomodoro Technique. The aim of this time management technique is to do short bursts of intense work, followed by short breaks.
An example of how it works is to perform a task for 25 minutes, then take a short 5-minute break. Do this a further 2 times and at the end of the 3rd time round, you are allowed a longer break.
According to some studies, work interruptions can cost you up to 6 hours a day. Given this statistic, you can see why it’s so important to set specific times where you will focus intently.
In Summary
Working from home can be a challenge at times. However, we can turn the dial in our favor to make every day more productive.
The tips in this post are nothing groundbreaking, it’s often the simple things that can have the most impact. You just need to commit to doing them consistently.
It would be great to hear your favourite tips for being more productive whilst working from home. Drop them in the comments below.
Adam Jones writes for The Growth Reactor which is a blog that will help you upgrade your life at start-up speed. The Growth Reactor provides all the latest actionable insights and tips on the most popular self-development trends to help you build the right habits to achieve all of your biggest goals in life.