If you get the chance to work at home, grab it right away because no other job can be so convenient for any individual. But be warned that working at home has its drawbacks just like any other work-related situation.
You may enjoy the perks of working at home, such as no traffic, no pesky co-workers, no expensive lunch meals, and no need to dress up. Also, you won’t have to put up with regular construction works where you’ll see concrete floor sealer products when the company is remodelling the office. But despite these perks, one of the major drawbacks to working at home is you’re less likely to be more productive.
It can be hard to be productive at home when your bed is just a few feet away from your desk. When you’re working at an office, there’s always that moment where you stop for a while and try to wrestle with a dilemma that just popped up while you’re working. In your home though, every time you pause for a minute because you’re trying to compose an email, the risk of taking a longer break is higher since your bed is just three steps away.
Fortunately, people who have succeeded in transitioning from being an office worker to a home-based professional have shared their thoughts on how to be more productive at home.
Think of your workplace at home as a real office
What often prevents people from being productive at home is that they can’t separate their home from their workplace. Even when they’ve set up a desk with a laptop and office supplies in their living room, their mindset is still: ‘This is my home, and I can take a nap whenever I want to’. This is detrimental to their progress in.
You should treat your workplace at home as a different environment to the rest of your house. You should look at it as a real office as you would before when you used to work in a real office.
Follow a schedule for the whole day
When you’re in a real office, you often have a schedule to follow in order to get things done. You start by checking your emails in the morning, which is followed with checking on your co-workers’ pending tasks and then working on your own assignments and so on.
When you’re working at home, you should still follow a schedule religiously to be more productive. And don’t let anything disrupt your focus, so tell your family not to disturb you when you’re working. Ask them to wait until your scheduled break if they really want to talk to you.
Start early
One more useful tip to being more productive at home is to start working early. As soon as you wake up, get up right away, grab your coffee and start working. The sooner you start your engine, the more tasks you’ll accomplish.
You don’t always have to be home-based
One of the other perks of working at home is that you’re not limited to working at home. As long as you can find a place where you have access to the internet, you can bring your laptop there and work.
It’s also helpful to work outside the home now and then because changing your environment from time to time can stimulate your brain and make you more active, therefore making you more productive.
