How to work from home more efficiently
on 11 March 2020 for ProfessionalsChances are your employer recently asked you to start working from home. Whether you work from home fulltime, once a week, or just every once in a while because of a virus outbreak, you’ll quickly notice how great working from home can be and how happy it can make you. You save time not commuting, you can work in your pyjama’s, and on top of that, there’s a range of (free) tools and apps that make keeping in touch with clients and colleagues a breeze. But you’ll also know how challenging it can be to work efficiently. If you aren’t careful, domestic duties and distractions can cause you to accomplish far less than you planned. So here are some top tips for working from home more efficiently.
Dress like you’re at work
If you want to work in sweats or pyjama’s all day, you can. But we don’t recommend it. Even if you won’t be meeting with another person all day, wearing your pyjama’s can make you feel sluggish, sleepy and unmotivated. We suggest keeping your regular routine when working from home. Dress just as you would for the office. This helps you to prepare psychologically for work and makes it seem like another day in the office, even if you will be working from your couch!
But hey, if you want to wear your Star Wars themed onesie, we’re not going to stop you!
Make sure you have a dedicated workspace
While it might be tempting to work from your couch, you’re unlikely to get much done. We’re not saying you need to spend a fortune designing a home office, but we do suggest working from a designated room, desk or chair. This helps signal to your brain that it’s time for work and will help you feel more alert and organized.
We applied this principle when designing our new office. Yes, we have a fully stocked bar complete with a pool table and pin ball machine. And yes, you probably already saw some nerf gun wars on our Instagram Stories. But we also have designated working spaces and even individual focus booths for when it’s time for the more serious stuff.
Plan your workflow
Staying focused while working from home can be extremely challenging. It’s easy to feel confused and overwhelmed by what you’re doing and it can be hard to get problems unstuck, especially when you’re used to interacting with colleagues on a regular basis. We recommend David Allen’s Getting Things Done for working efficiently and effectively from home. His simple “do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it” rule will help you power through your email inbox, set goals and plan your workflow.
The cornerstone of Getting Things Done is to plan out your day in chunks of time and set yourself regular breaks. With a properly planned workflow, you’ll have set times to work and set times to relax. This will get your efficiency levels through the roof. Trust us!
Keep things tidy
Nothing breeds inefficiency like having a cluttered, messy workspace. You’ll either lose important documents in the mess or, worse, you’ll procrastinate on work tasks in favor of cleaning it up. We’ve all been there.
When you work from home, you have to be your own janitor so make sure you set up a daily schedule. We recommend cleaning during your set break times. It helps to take your mind off work and gets you up and moving around. Or just don’t make a mess, it’s all up to you.
Stay in the loop
The best part about working in an office is the potential for collaborating and socializing with others. That’s the real reason Google famously offers its employees free food. Long lunch lines and plenty of dining tables help great conversations to flourish and this inspires innovative thinking.
So we suggest that you check in with your colleagues every once in a while. Fortunately, there are many great tools for staying in touch. You can try Trello or Asana for project management, WhereBy for video calls, and Slack for keep in touch with your team.
Manage digital distractions
It’s a lot easier to get distracted at home when there are no eyes on your screen except your own. However, digital distractions such as notifications and the temptations of checking out social media need to be kept in check sometimes.
If you feel like the temptation is too strong, we recommend proactively limiting screen time for certain websites or applications. Or you can even take it one step further and use apps like Flipd, a research-backed productivity app that helps track your progress, block distractions and stay on task.
Separate your work time and your personal time
If you have a strong work ethic, you may feel guilty about working from home and feel the need to over-prove yourself by working harder or longer. This is a big no-no; working from home is still a normal workday, it’s just from a different location. When it’s the end of your workday, just stop. Don’t work too far beyond what you planned out of guilt or fear. Keep a good work-life balance and call it quits for the evening instead of burning the midnight oil.
This is especially true when you don’t live by yourself. Your roommate, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, dog, cat or whoever is living with you will be thankful because you’ll be much better company.
Conclusion
Although we hope that everyone can return to his or her office sooner rather than later, you can become fantastically efficient at working from home if you follow these pointers. We’re confident that organizing your workflow, setting your break times and dressing for business will see your work output go through the roof.
want to learn more about Exellys and what we can do for you? With all job events being cancelled because of covid-19, we got creative and made sure you can still get to know us on a personal level. So click here to book a 15 minute video call with one of our Tech Talent Scouts (it literally takes two clicks!).
Have we forgot anything or what are your top tips for working efficiently? Let us know, we’d love to hear them!
Tags: covid-19 , efficiency , exellyst , home office , time management , workflow