Are you one who loves the comfort and convenience of hustling in your own hideaway, but wish you could be more productive? We get it, there are barriers to attaining your top form without the professional office environment (i.e pets, children, snacks, the list goes on).
With the recent spike in COVID cases, many more may be moving back to the default of working from home. That’s why we’ve prepared 5 key tips to help you be your most empowered self as you work from home!
Photo credits: Helpling
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Photo credits: Backlog
Did you know that our moods and emotions are primed based on our environment? As such, a relaxing home environment may not be our best ally, as compared to a professional office setting.
Create that headspace that fires up your productivity! Start setting routines that work in your favour.
Firstly, minimise distractions by choosing a quiet space in your home, muting handphone notifications, and eliminating visual distractions from your line of sight.
At the start of the day, it’s also ideal to prioritise tasks based on importance and urgency, and carve out blocks of time for deep focusing. Organising similar tasks to be accomplished in one go creates a familiar rhythm that fosters productivity as well.
Tracking your time spent on various tasks also helps you analyse your productivity, as you identify the bottleneck of processes, and how to mitigate them.
Lastly, remember to take breaks in between and move about, giving your mind and body that stretch that it needs, before hunkering down to tackle the next set of tasks. In fact, long stretches of work are shown to sap creativity. Walking to the window, or having a short chat with family members might give you that much sought-after inspiration after a period of mental block moment.
Try the Pomodoro technique – intense concentration for 25 minutes followed by a 3 to 5-minute break. The duration of work time can then be adjusted based on individuals. In fact, this time-management system is believed to help one grow immune to self-interruptions and even disciplines the brain to focus, earning it cult followership.
Photo credits: NewsPronto.com
Alone at your desk, racking your mind over some problems you can’t seem to solve, with only a never-ending to-do list as your accompaniment. Working at home can be lonely. Without the social interaction at the workplace, it may seem that everyone is battling deadlines on their own. The dearth of interaction can also negatively affect cohesion and coordination when synchronising on projects.
Take time out to socialise with your colleagues! A simple text or 5-minute call to check in on them can do wonders. Alternatively, set a day to have lunch together as a non-work catch-up. Establishing rapport at the workplace makes for happier staff with healthier well-being, and lays crucial foundation for collaboration in the future!
Photo credits: Toggl
Make technology your ally; harness it to help you achieve more!
Try Friday, an online and mobile-friendly software. As a planner and async operating system, it helps you stay on top of all your projects by collating all your meetings, task lists, and daily routines from disparate platforms like Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom and Trello, into 1 single space!
If you’re looking to digitalise your to-do list from the scraps of paper lying around, Todoist is a good choice. It effortlessly organises and prioritises personal tasks and collaborations with friends and co-workers.
Love the adrenaline of racing against time? If yes, you’ll enjoy this analytical tool, Toggl. It’s a leading online time tracking tool and productivity app trusted by freelancers, consultants and companies alike. Toggl enables users to identify the amount of time spent on various projects and review productivity. It’s also real-time synced with web trackers, desktop widgets and mobile apps for that a 360-degree, comprehensive overview.
Burning out. It’s one of the most common buzzwords since working from home became a default at the start of the pandemic. It happens when the initial excitement of staying home all day soon fizzles away with the lines between work and personal life blurs, leaving many feeling perpetually fatigued, physically and emotionally.
Stop feeling guilty about shutting down the computer at the end of the work day. Detaching from work on a daily basis is a form of stress management, key in helping individuals recover from an exhausting routine, and recharge for the day ahead.
Detaching is more than the absence of doing work. It is also about freeing your mind from nagging thoughts about future deadlines and looming tasks. Yes, it is important to give your best during your working hours, but also set boundaries for your personal life. Acknowledge that you can always work late into the night, but not at the expense of your physical and mental well-being.
So go ahead! Give yourself a pat on the back and some well-deserved rest.
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