10 Tips to Improve Productivity while you’re working from home during COVID-19

The world is suffering from the deadly outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and as a precautionary measure, many companies around the world are providing their employees with the facility to ‘work from home’. Man is called a social animal. So naturally, working from home can be a lonely and dull experience for you. As you are in your personal space, distractions can hamper your productivity. Being away from the professional working environment can fuel the distractions big time.

While some people find working from home terrifying, some people see it like a blessing. Everyone is different. Some might find listening to loud music more productive while for others, any type of sound would be a worst thing to listen while working. Some people work better in clutter while some can’t concentrate until the work place is tidy. Regardless of your style, here are some tips that will make you adjust to this new working environment.

 1. Start you day early

When you are working at office, the mandate to get up early and to be mentally prepared to work by the time you reach office can sometimes be very helpful. However, at home, your journey from getting up to starting the work can actually consume more time. Furthermore, prolonged breakfast and the morning sluggishness can lead you to a dull, tiring day.

Tips

• Dive into your to-do list as soon as you wake up.
• Simply get the work started early in the morning as you gradually proceed it throughout the day.

  2. Pretend like you’re going into the office

If you can make the mental association between the work and the office, there’s no way you can’t be more productive. You must focus on all the things you would do to prepare for an office day.

Tips

• Get fully ready for the day as you usually do while going to office
• Pretend like you’re actually going at work.
• Set your alarm, have coffee, wear nice clothes.
• You can also set up multiple accounts on browsers like Google chrome that enables different toolbars on the top.

 3. Don’t change your Routines

Sticking with your daily routine would help you regain the sense of normalcy. Just because you’re working at home, don’t try to change your daily routine. Not following the schedule may lead you to a decision making chaos and likely a loss of willpower too. More often than not, you won’t get your daily activities done.

Tips

• Don’t try to change your daily routine.
• Get up, eat, and exercise at a certain time.
• Keep doing all these daily activities at the same time.

4. Pick a Dedicated Work Space

Some of you may not have a home office or some of you may have it. If you are in the former category, you must decide your working space and form a boundary around it. Put yourself in the mindset that whenever you are in that workplace, you are in work mode.

Tips

• Whatever it may be, a kitchen table, a sofa, a desk. Stick to your territory and make it your own.
• Have all the essentials nearby, put a pretty picture there and make it as comfortable as your own office desk.
• Make the space attractive and as much work friendly as you can.
• As an additional tip, if you’re planning to purchase furniture for a dedicated workspace, a quick internet search for terms like “desk NZ” or “office chair near me” should already pull a list of stores that you can check out.

5. Avoid Unnecessary messing on Social Media

Either you are at office or at home, social media remains the biggest impediment to your productivity. If you can manage your social media time, higher are the chances that you’ll be much more productive

Tips

• Remove all social media applications from your browser shortcuts and log out of every account.
• You can even work in a private or incognito browser.
• Turning off the notifications is also another option.

6.Work when you are most productive

Nobody in the world works with the same intensity from morning to evening. Your intensity will naturally increase or decrease throughout the day. However, when you’re working from home, it becomes really vital to know when these rise and falls in intensity take place to plan your schedule.

Tips

• Capitalize on your productive periods.
• Keep the harder tasks reserved for those periods.
• Use the remaining hours in the day for completing the easier tasks.

7. Plan things ahead of time

After completing a task, you’ll often find yourself spending time figuring out what to do next. Moreover, if you plan certain tasks recently, there is always a temptation to change the plan. But it is equally important to commit and dedicate yourself to a strong plan to get things done on the right time.

Tips

• Keep your plans flexible.
• Always try to solidify your schedule a day before.

 8. Match Your Music to the Tasks

As they say, music is the soundtrack to your career, its true. Isn’t it? There would be very few who don’t love listening to music while working. Throughout the week, you’re accompanied with music and hence it is important to include music in this list.

Tips

• Listen to diverse playlists.
• You can listen to the music that matches the energy of the project you’re working on.
• Try listening to video game soundtracks as it is a lyric-free music and it helps you to concentrate more on your work.

9. Communicate with people around you

You will be used to talking with your colleagues at office, you should follow the same when you’re working at home. Even if the people around are not your coworkers, seeing a different face is a good idea when your work day is solitary.

Tips

• The people around you might be your roommates, siblings, parents, spouses, whatever they are, make sure you take out some time to communicate with them.
• Make sure that they respect your space during work hours as just because you’re working at home doesn’t mean you are at home.

10. Decide a Finishing time each day

You might expect working from home to give you more work-life balance, but this is not the case everytime. You can completely lose the track of time while working from home if you get caught up in an activity in a relaxing environment. In office, the coworkers packing up and leaving reminds you to do the same.

Tips

• You should set an alarm at the end of the day to indicate the end of your normal working day.
• Not precisely at the exact time, but try to finish your work around a fixed time every day.

To conclude, if you are working from home for the first time, these tips will surely help you grow in confidence and work with much more efficiency. Also, don’t forget to read about detailed information about coronavirus on COVID-19: 10 Facts Bursting the Myths