As more and more of us find ourselves continually working from home it’s important to show that we can maintain productivity levels similar to that of when working in the office. This post will show 5 very simple, yet crucial, ways to help keep your productivity high every day.
Working from home productively can be a challenge. There are lots of distractions that crop up all day, from the bombardment of extra emails to the onslaught of teams chats filling up our computer screens. In many cases, it doesn’t feel like we are working from home anymore but more living at work.
Some studies have shown that companies can save somewhere between $2400 and $4000 for each employee that works from home or remotely – a significant cost saving.
However, they have to balance that with figuring out if that cost saving is actually worth it. In other words, do productivity levels when working from home drop and wipe out the potential cost savings?
We won’t answer that question in this post but we will look at 5 key ways everyone can improve their productivity whilst working from home. Let’s take a look.
7-9 Hours Sleep
The average person spends up to 30% of their lives sleeping. For good reason too. Sleeping helps to restore our bodies every night and gets us prepared for the following day. We wouldn’t last too long if we never got any sleep.
However, although we should be getting around 7-9 hours of sleep every night, an astonishing 30% of people say they struggle to do this.
If you want to be more productive whilst working from home it’s incredibly important that you get the right amount of sleep. Try and aim to go to bed and wake up at the same time every night as it helps to align your body with your circadian rhythm.
A great tip to get in more sleep can be to fit in a quick power nap in the afternoon. However, it’s vital that you nap for less than 20 minutes as this is normally the point at which your brain falls into a deeper sleep. You will wake up feeling groggy and more tired if you nap for more 20 minutes as you’ll wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle.
Do Some Exercise
Physical exercise is one of the most powerful drivers of both our brains and nervous system. It is widely acknowledged that increased movement is associated with the development of our nervous system. There’s a good reason why babies are continuously moving around their mother’s womb.
Normally, we just associate exercising with building muscle, losing a few lbs, and athletic performance. However, it also has huge benefits associated with our mental and emotional health.
Running, cycling or swimming can help to lower anxiety and depression symptoms. It has also been shown to increase activity in the frontal lobe, this is a part of the brain that is typically associated with positivity, cognitive processing, and personality.
Exercise can also be a very useful way to increase our ability to learn new things and focus on tasks as it enhances the production of a protein called the Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF).
Obviously, if we are able to learn new things quicker and focus on tasks better it should help to increase our productivity.
Scheduling
Being able to work from home means we are able to enjoy a lot of luxuries that we don’t have whilst working in the office. It’s easy to let this added flexibility filter through into our working lives by creating less structure in our days than we would have if working in an office.
When working remotely it’s important to set a schedule for both when and how you will do your work. In this schedule, there should also be a firm start and stop time. This goes some way to helping create a boundary between work time and home life.
With remote work comes more emails and chat communication platforms which can really interrupt your day. If you schedule a block in your day where you turn off your email and chat functions it will allow you to properly focus on the work you need to do for a period of time with no distractions.
The Pomodoro Technique
Most of us will set an alarm to wake up in the morning or use a timer when we are cooking a meal, however, we will almost never use a timer when working. This is a trick that is seriously holding back our productivity. Those clued up on productivity techniques have been using a timer for years and to great effect.
Probably the most common of time-management techniques is The Pomodoro Technique. This technique allows you to focus on your work intently for a period of time and then have a short break.
For example, The Pomodoro Technique is typically a 25 minute period of intense work, followed by a 5-minute break. This is repeated another 2 times (3 in total) before you are allowed a longer break. The 25-minute blocks should be strictly focused on the task at hand and nothing else.
Using this technique whilst working from home can help significantly improve your productivity as it helps to eliminate any distractions for specific periods of time.
Healthy Eating
Thomas Edison once said, the doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” It’s such a great quote that emphasizes the point about putting the right fuel in our bodies to help us perform at our optimal level.
The correct nutrition is the backbone of our overall health. It provides us with the vitamins and minerals needed to help our bodies and brains function to the best of their abilities. If we feed our bodies with the right nutrients it will perform better. Much like a petrol car needs petrol to work properly, we need the right nutrition to work properly too.
We typically just eat for pleasure, enjoying the taste and texture. However, we also need to look at food as fuel that plays a vital role in our overall well-being. Fueling our bodies correctly allows us to stay more productive for longer. When working from home we have a bit more time to prepare food so there shouldn’t be any excuses as to why we can’t eat a little more healthily.
Final Words
To be productive whilst working from home requires you to adopt the right mindset and approach. By using the techniques outlined in this post it will help you have the best chance at increasing your productivity right away.
The approaches are simple, yet often overlooked. We just need them to be front of mind more often. If you feel your productivity levels slipping, refer back to this post and you will get yourself back on track in no time.
About the Author:
Adam Jones writes for The Growth Reactor which is a blog that will help you upgrade your life at start-up speed. The Growth Reactor provides all the latest actionable insights and tips on the most popular self-development trends to help you build the right habits to achieve all of your biggest goals in life.