5 Easy Productivity Tips when Working from Home for Effective Results
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When I started working from home, I loved the fact that I had more control over my schedule; however, with all this newfound freedom I realized it was leading me to be less productive. I was getting distracted, taking longer to complete tasks, doing less meaningful tasks to feel productive, and feeling like my normal rhythm was out of whack. As a result, my days started getting longer to meet deadlines and my stress levels started increasing.
So, today I want to share a few tips and tools that will help you focus on the right task at the right time, help you push through some of those tasks when you're feeling drained or overwhelmed, and ultimately working less so you can impress your colleagues and your clients.
For the time poor, here is a quick summary:
De-clutter and Improve your Accessibility: Keeping a clean and organized (digital and physical) workspace can help clear your mind, improve workflow and get you focused.
Get a Task and Note Manager: This will help you plan, prioritize, and schedule tasks and projects easily so you can easily manage your tasks and use of time.
Set a Rough Schedule: This can help you understand when and what activities need to be done, in which priority and prevents routine tasks falling through the cracks.
Plan for the Worst: This gives you more time to do tasks, reduces pressures of deadlines and allows you to estimate task duration more accurately.
Find a Motivator: Helps you see the bigger picture, so you can power through some of those tasks that would otherwise lead to procrastination, or delays.
Now, for the detail. I think mindset plays a massive role in productivity, and I think some of these tips can provide benefit even if you don't have a great mindset from the get-go.
DE-CLUTTER AND IMPROVE YOUR ACCESSIBILITY
My first tip is to de-clutter and improve your accessibility. To get into a good headspace and a productive mindset, we need to start cleaning up some of these distractions. The first thing I like to do is to free my brain of all the mess so it can start to process more important information.
Essentially, you want to remove all the noise in your life - this means getting rid of all the rubbish, cleaning up those old documents, clearing out your inbox, and starting with a clean slate. What's really important is keeping your workspace (both digital and physical) clean and I find that my mind tends to follow as well.
First and foremost is organisation, and this is one that people usually hate or love. Maintaining a clear structure with areas that are intuitive and accessible, allow you to grab information readily and easily. I found an effective way of helping out with my organisation is a folder structure.
It's easy for people to make folders which they throw everything in. These end up being a long list of documents that have no place, no shape, no form. A great skill to practice is breaking these up into sub-categories. Now, when you start making your folder structure resist the urge to dump absolutely everything into that folder. Resist the urge to make ten sub-folders where you click into one, and you have keep going until you actually find what you want in the tenth folder.
I've made a Free Folder Structure Template in Notion to give you some inspiration.
The next part is accessibility, and this is a really important part of being productive. I think this fundamentally comes down to environment design. What’s important when designing your environment is making sure that it suits different times of the day, and different applications.
If you're sitting for longer, you're getting back pain, you're feeling a little bit drained, you may want to consider getting a sit-stand disk. That way, you can stand up for parts of the day and feel a bit more energized. If sun light is coming through the window, hitting you, it's feeling hot, you may want to get a day-night blind. You could also consider a desk lamp, or some sort of ambient lighting to help you during those long nights pushing through to meet deadlines.
Essentially, what you're trying to do is make it as easy as possible to do what you do. So, don't put your notebook in the cupboard when you need to take heaps of notes throughout the day. Make sure it's right by your side, in the drawer next to you, or within an arm's reach.
Lastly, what I think is key to a great environment is making sure that it's just inviting - you just want to go in there and you're excited to do work, it looks really clean, and aesthetic. That's what I love!
GET A TASK AND NOTE MANAGER
My second tip is to get a task and a note manager. I developed my task and note manager in a program called Notion. It's free to use and really simple. I use it for almost everything in my life and I totally recommend that (not sponsored, just my opinion). The great thing about using Notion is the free templates already out there which allow you to duplicate elements people have already come up. You also have the ability to mold these duplicated elements to your own style and requirement.
My task and note manager allow me to easily plan, schedule, record information, and manage everything I need to perform tasks effectively. In my personal opinion, I don't think task managers need to be complex, they can be, but I think there's only a few areas that you need in order to manage tasks effectively. These being a:
Description: What are you actually doing?
Priority: Is this a high priority? Do I actually need to do this task now?
Status: Is this in progress, complete or have you not started it?
Due Date: Is there any key information about the task?
SET A ROUGH SCHEDULE
So, my third tip, and the one that I struggle with the most is actually setting a schedule for myself (this is especially prevalent if you work for yourself). My rough schedule is split into a daily and a weekly schedule. You can have a monthly or a yearly, but I find that just those two work for me. A weekly schedule is great if you have similar tasks and you need to batch those together or you know on certain days you do particular activities. It can be beneficial to help you shuffle your work and get the most out of your week.
My daily schedule is broken up into two sections. The first section is all the tasks that I do on a recurring basis, and this could be uninterrupted time where I put on my noise-cancelling headphones or it could be setting up meetings in a specific part of the day where I've allocated that.
The second part of my daily schedule is the tasks that I set in the morning, so I always start off my day by setting a daily win - so if there was one task that I could do today, what would have the greatest impact towards my project, or my day, or my week, or my month. I set that in the morning and I make sure that's the one task that I get done, and then if there's any other specific tasks that I need to do as well, I'll record those as well. By setting a rough framework for your day or your week, I find it helps get a good routine and allows you not to miss any of the important stuff.
Check out my Free Rough Schedule Template.
PLAN FOR THE WORST
So, my fourth tip and one that is a simple mistake to make is not planning for the worst. I'm guilty of this and it's stung me a few times - but essentially you want to undersell and over deliver, not the other way around. I don't know how many times I've left the hardest task to last and it always bites me. It always takes me much longer than anticipated or I find myself scrambling at the last minute stressed and trying to get the deadline.
I think the best thing to do is not assume any task will be easy, because all you need is something to not go as planned, or an error to pop up in your document, or it just takes you way longer than you anticipated. This is where the task manager comes in handy because you can re-juggle your priorities and figure out what tasks need to be done today and not left to the last minute.
Using a time tracker is a great way to capture the actual amount of time that it takes you to do a task, so that way you can properly forecast and estimate project duration. Ultimately, this method will help you set more realistic deadlines. If you are looking for a time tracker, I would recommend Clockify.
FIND A MOTIVATOR
The absolute best way to be productive, is to love what you're doing. Think about when you're doing a hobby or something that you actually want to do - you're filled with energy and it's actually easy. Most times when we don't feel productive, it's most likely because we don't want to do it. Even though we may not have direct control over what we do, we can control our mindset and how we approach it.
So, my final tip is finding a motivator. Finding this can be the most difficult part because it can be difficult to see the forest when you're walking through the trees - and what I mean by that is when you're doing some of those more menial tasks you can often lose sight of why you're doing it, or what you're working towards. So, I think a really great way to avoid that, is knowing your goals and setting some really great intentions for the year. That way, when you're doing work you can really focus on how can I do this particular task to get me closer to where I want to be.
This may not work for every task, but there is an opportunity to make some of those tasks more meaningful. This can be done by either taking long drawn-out processes and making them simpler, making them look better, or just improving it in the general sense. That way your work becomes less transactional, and becomes more about adding value to the business or improving yourself.
Aside from honing your skills by doing some of these tasks that you don't like until you become a subject matter expert, another really great way is to actually pass that knowledge on. There's going to be tasks that we know we're great at, we know they just have to be done, and they're boring. But to somebody else, they're new, they're fresh, and they're really exciting. A lot of people actually want to have a go at trying those things out. Sharing some of that knowledge with junior members of the team is a great way to continue the life-cycle. I find actually giving back is quite rewarding in itself, and it helps grow you, and the people around you. Which is a win-win in my books.
If you need help finding a motivator, check out my Free Goal Setting Template.
ANY OTHER TIPS FOR PRODUCTIVITY?
There are so many other ways to be productive, check out some of the other productivity articles in my blog or head over to my productivity playlist on my YouTube channel.
Reach out to me on Twitter or Instagram and let me know how these tips helped you improve your productivity when working from home or if you have any suggestions for me.
If you want to see short-form content like this, check out my TikTok channel.