Despite the fact the world is starting to open up again, there are still many people that are going to be home working on their laptop or home computer. This is because many companies have realized the value of remote working arrangements and have started to incorporate them into their regular workflows.
In some cases, businesses may even downsize their company and even stop renting an office location in favor of switching to a completely online-focused workflow.
Since it opens up many new recruitment opportunities and reduces costs, it’s easy to see why companies have started to adopt remote working arrangements.
So if you’re still going to be working from home for the foreseeable future, here are a couple of ways to further improve your productivity.
Start Maintaining a Proper Schedule
If you’ve only recently started working from home or have realized that you’re going to be doing it for the foreseeable future, then it’s absolutely mandatory to have a proper work schedule. This is usually something that happens naturally because some businesses require you to work during a specific time frame.
However, if your work-at-home arrangement allows you to stop and start whenever you see fit, then it helps to maintain some kind of regular schedule. Wouldn’t you agree?
The purpose of a schedule is to help you manage your time appropriately so that you’re not blurring the lines between what’s considered work time and personal time.
Many people that start working from home for the first time will find that it’s nearly impossible to separate their work and personal life because they can easily load up their laptop and start doing some work.
With this in mind, it is important that you set a start and stop time. We suggest maintaining regular working hours such as between 9 AM – 5 PM so that you have your evenings free and can maintain a regular sleep schedule. This will help emulate normal office hours and will make it easy to transition back to commuting to work if your company’s office ever opens up again.
Removing Distractions
Distractions are perhaps the biggest problem when it comes to working from home. It’s extremely easy to start procrastinating because you’re looking at the TV, and it’s easy to start listening to the radio instead of paying attention to your work.
It generally depends on the type of work you do, but most people would find it difficult to get work done while listening to music or watching television.
In general, the fewer distractions you have, the easier it is to stay productive. If you prefer having some kind of background noise, then music without lyrics can be a great option.
Some people might even load up a video on YouTube of office sounds or café noises just to emulate a working environment. It can be effective for some people, but others might find it even more distracting and will generally prefer to work in silence.
Regardless of what you choose, it’s important to focus on getting rid of distractions so that you can stay focused on your work. The more distractions you introduce, the less productive you’ll be and more likely you’ll lose track of what you were doing.
Getting More Organized
Most people have simple work-at-home environments such as a simple desk, a laptop, and maybe a folder or two for important documents. This is about the bare minimum that you can use and it’s vital that you start looking for other ways to get organized so that you’re more productive and efficient.
As an example, you can organize your desk for maximum productivity by adding sorting equipment, and you could also consider getting a new chest of drawers or even a shelf to help you sort out your documents and keep them separate from the rest of your belongings.
One of the biggest problems with working from home is simply the fact that many of us expected to do it temporarily. As such, we’ve been waiting to return to work and haven’t bothered setting up a proper home office. However, if you’re going to be spending more time working from home, then it’s a good idea to establish some kind of home working environment at home that encourages productivity.
Final Thoughts
As you continue to work from home, you’ll find that there are loads of small personal ways to improve your productivity. These are unique to each individual and not every tip will work for everyone. Therefore, take what resonates with you in this post and leave the rest. The goal is to use trial and error to figure out your most productive home working environment.
