5 Ways To Stay Productive While Working From Home

By Author: Novel Office
Total Articles: 2
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Working from home sounds like a dream doesn’t it? You can just sit around in your pajamas all day and call all the shots. No boss breathing down your neck, no rush hour traffic, no having to leave your bedroom. But all this comes with certain pitfalls that will blur the line between work and home and productivity and unproductivity. So how do you stay productive through all this you ask?
Define your space
One of the biggest problems of working from home is the blurring of home and work mode. Do not work from your bed or comfy sofa, have an ergonomic chair or a standing desk from where you do all your work. If you work from your bed you’ll have the problem of “never leaving work”, and most people cannot be productive in the place that they sleep as well. So ensure you divide your home into different zones of work and “home”.
Dress for work
While lying down in your pajamas may sound like the most appealing way to work, it is not necessarily the most productive way to work. Dress like how you would for a regular day at the office, the clothes we wear have an immense psychological effect on ...
... our motivation to work. When we wear something like pajamas it immediately puts us in the let’s relax mode and that takes away immensely from productivity. The more professional our attire the more is our motivation.

Plan out your day
Make sure you take the time to plan out your day in the most productive manner possible, and make sure you stick with the schedule. If you find yourself unable to stick to the schedule, plan out your day in hours and try sticking to that. You must make sure you give enough breaks so that you can be your most productive, just keeping yourself glued to the screen can make your day soon turn to unproductivity. You can even use an app to keep a track of these tasks you assign to yourself.

Wake up early
This helps you develop more of a rhythm to make your days more structured, one advantage we get when working from an office is the commute that helps us wake up. It’s been proven by studies that it takes the body at least two hours to be productive after waking up, so the whole ritual of getting ready and leaving for work covers that buffer period. Whereas when you work from home that advantage is lost, so the earlier you get up the more productive you can be, you can even include some exercise in your regiment.

Get out more
One of the biggest disadvantages of working from home is the social isolation that comes with it, that’s why it’s important for telecommuters to meet friends in the evening after work. Make it a habit to go out and meet people on a regular basis, not only this you should make it a priority to communicate with your co-workers and boss, at least on the phone. If there is no communication then the desired output may not be achieved. The less you communicate the more isolated you become, that’s why you find some telecommuters suffering from depression.
It’s important to note that all the suggestions listed above will not work for everyone, as each telecommuter is different. These are more of general guidelines; some of us could actually be productive in our pajamas.