Working from home has totally been a blessing in disguise for many who hold jobs that are possible remotely. It offers flexibility, and convenience, and saves a lot of your time and money. The good thing about the flexibility that comes with working from home is that you can prioritize your personal errands and your job. But that’s not true, at least not the latter part. While you have enjoyed this freedom to prioritize your errands throughout the day, you have also gotten too comfortable. Having zero routines is dangerous; it means you need to be your own boss and steady yourself to keep moving forward, to keep making effort. But you are bound to lag and that’s okay.

In this blog, we have compiled a list of tips you can try to stay productive, focused, and stress-free while working from home;

6 Tips to Stay Focused While Working From Home

Is Your Internet Working Okay?

Don’t you hate it when you are having a meeting online with a client and then suddenly your video starts buffering? Internet connection is one of the factors that affect your productivity while you are working. You are looking up technical terms on Google search on your Google Chrome browser when suddenly the no internet dinosaur pops up (you know what dinosaur game on Google Chrome I’m talking about, we’ve all played that one). If such continuous disruptions occur, it seriously impedes your ability to continue with the job of the day.

The solution here is to get an internet connection that is smooth enough to not interfere with online meetings with your clients. If you are looking for some good speeds with reasonable pricing, call Xfinity to learn about the internet plans you need for working from home.

Lessen Your Digital Distractions

When your work involves being online all the time, it can get hard to avoid any other digital interruption i.e. your smartphone. It is easy to get lured towards social media and web browsing because all of us have this habit of checking our phones every five minutes. Also while you are connected to work communication apps such as Slack, Teams, Skype, etc., and constantly bombarded with gossip about the workplace it doesn’t mean you have to keep replying to these messages or serially refresh your email inbox.

It is important for you to create boundaries so that you can focus on work that needs to be done on a priority basis. Minimize the notification pings on your phone and laptops so that you can lessen the stress and anxiety and carry on with your tasks.

Prioritize Your Work

Just minimizing the distractions around you is not enough. If you want to be really productive, you need to prioritize your work over everything else. That does depend on your schedule and commitments, but ideally, make sure that you have at least three hours in a day of uninterrupted time for your work. Make sure you stick to it.

With time, you can also increase these uninterrupted hours so that you can hone your abilities to maintain your focus for a longer period.

Don’t Waste Your Time on Low-Value Tasks

Tasks that are low-value or low-reward ones and keep our progress throughout the day visible and organized often require very little cognitive effort. Examples include replying to emails, dealing with invoices, filling out forms, and time sheets for logging in, updating your progress, etc.

We can’t really ditch this work, but we can use tools to help us finish such tasks effectively. If you receive an email from your supervisor to confirm whether you have submitted some documents to specific clients, instead of replying to it, you can send automatic replies stating “confirmed”. This saves you from actually typing out the email.

Don’t Forget to Take Breaks

You deserve breaks while you are working. Because they help to sustain your productivity level so that when you do get back to it again, you have a refreshed mind.

Maybe your idea of taking breaks is spending 30 minutes scrolling through Instagram or watching a 2-minute episode of your favorite Netflix series. But that’s not it; it doesn’t really serve to clear your mind. taking these breaks is a chance for you to step away from the screen and allow your brain some relaxing time so that it is recharged for new tasks.

Plan Tomorrow’s Tasks

After you are done with the day’s tasks, resist the urge to turn everything off right away. Take a few minutes to work on planning tomorrow’s tasks because it is a good idea to plan everything ahead. This allows you to prioritize some tasks so that the next day, you can jump at them right away.

Planning ahead can also help you to prepare for early morning meetings. This minor act of preparing for tomorrow’s work before shutting down can help you to psychologically transition into your personal time.

Final Thoughts

All you need to do to work from home effectively is to prioritize your time around your home. Your personal time should be scheduled separately from when you need to work. There also needs to be a different time for socializing and web browsing online. Hence, it is all about prioritizing.