How to be super-productive and super-efficient while working from home?

Working from home is the new mantra. You can save the time spent in travel as well as rental expense. But is it practically possible for your kind of industry? Discover the top 20 work from home tips to make you super productive and efficient in your work. All this while enjoying your work and your family life.

Work from home allows you to have work life balance. However, working from home has its own pros and cons. Before you take big leap towards quitting your job, you may like to weigh the benefits and challenges of working from home. Is it suitable as per your lifestyle? Can you cope up with it and make yourself more productive? Or do you think it shall bring you more troubles than benefits. You would like to explore the below post discussing in detail.

Inspite of having numerous challenges, you can plan your lifestyle such as to overcome these challenges. All this while keeping the benefits of WFH option intact. Sounds amazing right!!

It would be super exciting to actually accomplish the bliss of staying at home with kids and managing to earn money. You can stay financial independence without sacrificing the comfort of your home or care for your kids.

Here are top working from home productivity tips (making you super efficient while you achieve work-life balance in true sense)

Set well-defined working hours

Just like your office, set working hours for your home office too. Decide how many hours a day shall you spend working. You may take into account the business that you cater to, working hours of your colleagues or clients or general industry norms. This will help you demarcate between work time and family time. It also keeps your family and office colleagues informed when you will be available so they can plan accordingly.

Set well-defined work space

A clean and dedicated workspace can help you in creating a work atmosphere at home. Setup place which is comfortable and has good lighting conditions. You would like to keep away from distractions of television.

Choose an ergonomic chair so that sitting for long hours will be comfortable for your back. Keep your desk clutter-free and not messy so that you are motivated and well-planned.

Dress for work

I know that the best thing about working from home is to dress in comfortable clothes all day along. You wouldn’t have to spend on buying office wear. However dressing for work changes your mindset. Set aside comfortable clothes as office wear. So that when you switch to your ‘officewear’ mentally you prepare yourself for getting in work mode.

Align your schedule with people at home and office

Let your colleagues know what your plans are for the day or week. They will be well-informed what to expect from you and when. You may inform them about timing of picking your child from bus-stop or your lunch hour.

Same goes for your family. Align the plans of household work as per your work schedule. So that both are balanced and you do not have to undergo stress of juggling both.

You may also go ahead and share your time blocks with your colleagues and your family so that all are aware of the schedule.

Set daily morning routine

Setting a fixed morning routine is the best way to prepare ourself to move into work mode. The ideal work routine may have taking warm shower, planning the day ahead, having a hot piping cup of coffee at your desk, meditating just before starting the work or just changing into work wear.

Do the same things everyday so that you prepare yourself to start your work. Cutting yourself from responsibilities at home to shifting into work gets much easier.

Changing your routine daily will create lot of chaos which shall defeat the benefits of working from home.

Keep social media away

Social media is biggest time killer. Thought there is lot of information and knowledge being shared on social platforms, there is lot of unnecessary information which is not useful for you.

Did you open your instagram to check food ideas and ended up scrolling beyond lunch hour? Or are a person who spends time scrolling facebook post meaninglessly, catching up with recent pictures and post of your friends.

If you are working alone, the need to connect shall be more. So it is important that you schedule your time on social media. There are apps to help you determine how much time you are spending on social media apps.

Be mindful of how you use social media. Sign out of all the subscription on all social media accounts which are eating away your time and not serving any good.

Make effective to-do list

Making a random to-do list which holds everything that you plan to do both at work and home is not effective tool. It is just making you overwhelming and creating chaos.

Every night, choose 3 most important tasks that you plan to accomplish on subsequent day. It helps you to focus on important things.

Take a pen and paper to write 3 most important tasks for each day. Plan your day in advance. It will help you to focus on important things. Be focused. Ensure that you finish the 3 important tasks that you have assigned for the day before doing anything else.

I am a very impromptu person. I always like to deal with things as they I face them. But I have realized that prioritizing task goes a real long way in accomplishing them.

Earlier I would have a list of 10 tasks on my to do list. And by the end of the day I would realize that I have hardly finished any of them. Ironically, I would have spent doing tasks which were not in my list at all. This led to piling up of tasks day in and day out leading to stress.

Now that I set only 3 tasks on my priority list, I manage to accomplish them. Accomplishing the task also gives me a sense of fulfillment and motivates me.

Use time management techniques

There are two most important time management technique that I swear by.

First one is Pomodoro technique. In this technique, timer is set to 25 min wherein person shall focus on one particular task only. After 25 minutes, a break of 5 minutes is set. This block of 25min of task time and 5 min of break time is called one pomodoro. After every 4 pomodoro blocks, a longer break of 25-30 minutes can be taken. This is an interesting technique that is great combination of time block and focus.

Another technique I absolutely love is from the book Getting things done introduced by David Allen. The basic principle of this technique is that if any task take less then 2 minutes, just do it now and do not write it in your to-do list.

For bigger tasks, break them into smaller tasks that can be started or accomplished now. Finish one task at a time. This way you can finish many smaller tasks immediately. So your list of pending tasks becomes much smaller and looks less daunting.

Take scheduled breaks for coffee / lunch

Though working timings of an office are generally 8 to 10 hours per day, It was observed by Researchers that person is productive for about 3 hours per day and about 12.5 hours per week.

Researchers have conducted a separate research to infer that long working hours can hamper productivity. As working time increases, output per hour decreases.

So it is advisable to break monotony every 90 minutes. Take a short term breaks. Walk around the house, have some coffee, make yourself a sandwich or do your laundry.

Build a good support system at work and home

It is extremely important that people at home and at office are aligned with your work schedule. Just let everyone know what to expect from you in terms of time and work too.

Though you love multitasking or you are proud of being superwoman, trying to do everything by yourself is overwhelming and can become stressful over time. Ask for help when you need it. Learn to say NO when you need to.

Be kind to yourself.

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Staying confined to walls of your home for hours and days at end can deprive you of sunshine. It can be pretty depressing to be inside the house all the time. Set particular time to get out of the house, maybe, just for a walk. Or to pick your kids from school. Or buy bread and milk.

Get out of home regularly

Let that cool breeze blow in your hair. Feel the smell of fresh flowers. It will make you feel energized and fresh.

Socialize with friends and extended family

When you decide to work from home, there will be less opportunities to socialize with your colleagues. You may end up feeling bored. So make plans with your friends.

Have them over for dinner or just stroll around the city together. Even if you are not a party animal, just having someone to talk to and share your emotions will make you feel happy.

Overcommunication is the key

Communication is very important when you are working from home. Let your colleagues and family know how you feel or what your plans are. They will know what to expect. It may not always be conveyed enough. Tell it again and again till you get acknowledged for your plans or action. Over communication is always better than under communication.

Don’t be too hard on yourself

All the while when you try to be most disciplined and productive person, you may end up bashing yourself more often. Working alone means there is little or no support from other colleagues. So there are more tasks that you may not be excellent at. Tasks which require more time and effots than than others. You may find yourself jumping from one task to another often.

Its okay. Its absolutely okay. Do everything at your own pace. Practise selfcare. Avoid facing burn-out by your own emotions.

multitasking may not be good idea — Multitasking may become problem instead of solution.

Avoid multitasking

You love staying up late at night finishing the office work? So you set your laundry for washing that time?

Being the best employee and super-productive mom may be your thing. Even though you may think that you are doing best in both the worlds, research says that multitasking can lower your productivity.

Be focused on one task at a time

Use tools and technology to automate or assist in tasks

Make use of technology and apps to make your work easier and productive.

Some of the apps that help are :

Your hour : for tracking social media time
Forest : for tracking time on each task and staying focused
Google drive : for storage and sharing of documents and files
Air table : for tracking and sharing work among team members
Microsoft teams : for communication with team members along with sharing of documents

There are many more depending on what functions would you like to automate. There are apps which help you order grocery, pay your bills, make grocery or to do lists. Automate every task that you can. It saves you lot of time and makes your life easier.

Manage stress levels

This is one of the most important aspect of working from home. As you continue to work at home for long hours, loneliness may set in. Working without much support and multitasking can also become stressful. It is important that you acknowledge the stress levels and find ways to manage them effectively.

Meditation can be very effective way of dealing with stress. I use Headspace – A meditating app which I find to be super easy and effective. You may socialise regularly or indulge in creative hobby that you absolutely love.

Make self-care and grooming part of your routine

Self care is most important even if you are not working from home. I cant stress enough on importance of self love and self care. Though you have many priorities in life, never neglect y our own self. Always acknowledge your feeling and emotion.

Set aside 30 minutes of each day towards self care and grooming. Let me suggest ideas of self care that work for me :

Taking a stroll through neighboring lane
Reading book in a genre I love
Playing with pet or with children
Lighting a candle and listening to soothing music
Praying or meditating
Cooking a new recipe
Rearranging my cupboard (Yes, that makes me happy too. Nothing beats the joy of having an organized cupboard.)
Exercising (I keep alternating with different workouts from Youtube if I am not working out in gym)
Pampering myself with bright nail paints (I have bright yellow and deep blue nailpaint also in my shelf. LOL)
Chatting with girlie gang (Gossiping with friends about new store in town is just another level of entertainment. Lot of giggles coming your way)

work from home productivity pin — Working from home productivity tips

Be kind to yourself

This is extended part of self-care. As you take care of your body and mood, it is important that you do not destroy your self-esteem. Be kind to yourself.

Look into the mirror and say “I AM ENOUGH”. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. Nobody is perfect. We all walk our life through ups and downs. Today you may have missed some task or were delayed. It is part of life. You can try again tomorrow.

Understand that it is about you

All the ideas I mentioned about being super productive were the ones that worked for me. You can make use of ones that suit you and your lifestyle better. Feel free to add new ones or twist the existing ones to help you better. Make your personal “work from home plan”. Figure out the challenges that you are facing while working from home. Find out way to overcome them. There is no ideal way of doing it, its all about what works for you.

Be disciplined and mindful

The word discipline invokes the emotion of hatred. It probably reminds us of being reprimanded or punished by our teacher in our childhood. But discipline is not that. Not just that, I would say.

It is about making rules for yourself and following them. It is important that you follow your plan of action. If you are not disciplined, you may fall off the bandwagon easily.

It’s easy to be distracted or to procrastinate when there is no one around whom you are answerable. So practice mindfulness about your actions and their implication. It is ok to let yourself loose when you feel you need to. But at other times, be disciplined!!!.

Let’s do it

Though working from home may seem enticing, you need to weigh the pros and cons that come with it. With the successful implementation of even few tips from those suggested above will make a astronomical difference to the way you handle your work and family. Let me know in the comments below, is there anything else that worked for you. I would love to hear from you.

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Stay in touch

Let me know in the comments below, what would you like to improve in your self.

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