Just because you work from home doesn’t mean that you won’t experience frustrations. It can be easy to become distracted, lose focus, or create a sucky work-life balance. These are some of the things I’ve learned that have helped me work from home effectively:
1. Protect your off-work time
Seriously. Protect it, because it is important.
While working from home, it can become easy to continue working after hours, especially if you’re feeling that you’re accomplishing a lot, or if you’ve felt you didn’t accomplish enough. If you continue working so many hours, it can become easier to experience burnout – which no one wants. 🙅🏾
Protect your time by setting limits for yourself. Personally, I time block my day using Google Calendar – I can clearly see when I start, when I plan to end, and make time for the various tasks in between. I cover more about time blocking here.
I’ve also set for myself a max time to work outside of my 8 hour day, which is an hour. After that, 🤷🏾 whatever I’m doing is going to have to get finished tomorrow.
2. Have a Dedicated Work Space
Having a dedicated space to work will help you stay focused. Physically, you’ll have fewer distractions around you, so you’ll only be able to focus on the tasks at hand.
Additionally, having a dedicated space helps your brain to understand what it needs to focus on. Recent research has shown that your brain will be better able to compartmentalize tasks when you create a routine – in this case, the routine is working only in your dedicated space.
This is the reason experts say to use devices in another space other than your room or on your bed. It teaches your brain that the bed is meant for sleeping, and the dedicated space is meant for work.
3. Get Enough Sleep
Whether working remotely or in-office, getting enough sleep is crucial to your performance. You won’t be able to think as well or do your tasks as well if your body is begging for rest. Ensure to get enough sleep every night so that your mind can be sharp and alert the next day.
4. Drink Water
Or some other hydrating liquid
Similar to getting enough sleep, drinking enough water helps your mind to stay clear, alert, and sharp, which will help you to complete your tasks effectively.
Drinking water can also affect your sleep. Recent research has shown that those who are dehydrated experience poorer sleep quality, and tend to have shorter sleep patterns. Shorter sleep patterns can cause sleep deprivation, which will lead to poorer performance in both your personal and professional life.
5. Stay Active
Okay, this is easier said than done, but it’s important to stay active – especially if you’ve been around a desk all day. To stay healthy, you want to keep the blood flowing and your body flexible.
Staying active will also prevent other issues (like back pain) which is common among folks who work from desks.
Check out this post for ways to stay active while working from home!
6. Take Breaks
I don’t mean to take breaks for long stretches where you play games, scroll through reddit, watch TV and forget the world – you have things to do!
But what I mean here is taking a few moments to stretch your legs, drink a glass of water, grab a snack, or meditate for a few moments.
Your brain can’t be on “go-go-go” mode all the time – it needs chances to rest and recuperate, which will help it to better absorb information, create new ideas, and allow for more focus when you need it.
These tips may take some time to apply, but I’ve found them immensely helpful to work from home effectively. Give them a try, and let me know how it goes!
Do you have what you need to work from home? Check out this post!