The idea of working from home seems pretty amazing to start. Get up when you want, blast your favorite music, and maybe even have The Office playing in the background. However, after a while, you realize it’s pretty hard to stay efficient.
Here are 5 things you can do to make sure you’re making the best use of your time:
1. Dump the emails, adopt remote working apps – If you and your team usually communicate in person and on emails… it’s time to update your workflow! Using platforms like Slack you can easily communicate with all of your team without getting lost in massive email chains for basic things.
Adam Gonzalez, a music marketing expert leads a remote start-up and says “Making the switch from emails and even WhatsApp groups to Slack really helps. People don’t get annoyed by messages and it’s a much more streamlined way to communicate with a remote team”.
2. Dress the part – In the first few days, it’s very tempting to work in your pajamas. It will actually help your productivity with your early excitement. However, sooner or later you end up being lethargic, working in your pajamas from your bed. Once this happens your productivity can begin declining very fast.
A great way to counter this is to get up and get dressed how you do every day to go out for work. This puts your brain in the mindset of working. Simply getting dressed professionally can help you concentrate more and take your work more seriously. Combine this with the habit of working from your desk and not your bed and you’ll be back on the road to productivity!
3. Create a schedule – Time flies when you work from your couch or bed. It’s an all too common feeling to suddenly find out it’s already 1 pm and you’ve barely done anything. It’s simple advice, but starting every day by writing down an hour by hour plan of what you want to do that day helps a lot. If you can break it up hour-by-hour, or simply set 3 main goals for each day and keep yourself accountable for hitting those.
Vik Pathak, a remote working entrepreneur in the fintech space explain the power of a little planning: “It sounds like basic advice, but it’s really too easy to get distracted working from home. If you just give yourself tangible achievable goals for every couple of hours you set yourself up for success”.
The next few weeks are going to be confusing and anxiety-inducing for a lot of us. With these tips, you can stay on the ball and make the most of your time at home.