We’ve all heard the global mantra of “we’re all in this together.” Still, working remotely can grow a bit tedious, and can make it more difficult to find a healthy and sustainable work-life balance. Sure, tackling the day’s work from the comfort of your favorite PJs has its charm, but when home becomes the office and the office is your home, it’s more than just the dress code that begins to morph into a new game, on a new playing field. And while the joys of comfort can be truly beneficial towards creating an ultra-Zen setting for the workday, so with it comes the emergence of new and unique challenges.
When working from home, many may find that it’s a lot easier to get distracted from the tasks at hand, be it by housemates, pets, gadgets, or even the age-old battle between discipline and indulgence. What’s more? The prolonged lack of interaction with teammates and coworkers can lead to a decline in effective brainstorming, group morale, and individual engagement. However, with the proper planning and strategic use of the right techniques and tactics, working remotely can ensure the same high-quality employee experience as an in-person workday.
Here are a few tips to maintaining optimal success while working from home:
Get Up & Get Ready
Wake up and get ready as though you were actually going into the office for work. Rolling straight out of bed and into your workspace in full pajama glory can set the wrong tone of energy for the day and dampen your professional high-achiever vibes. Instead, throw on your favorite power pantsuit or go business casual with your best foot (and best mind) forward each day.
Rely on Productivity Rituals
Get yourself a planner and use it diligently. Writing down your daily goals and keeping an active checklist can help hold you accountable throughout the workday. ‘Winging it’ can make it quite difficult to keep track of all the things you have to do in order to have a fully productive and truly successful day. Writing it down and making a check-mark alongside each accomplished task can help keep you organized and aware of vital deadlines and their respective progress.
Set a Schedule
Set a firm, detailed schedule for yourself to follow each day. If you don’t have a set schedule, it can become a whole lot easier to procrastinate, and waste perfectly good time making little to no progress. So always hit the ground running with an ambitious but realistic schedule for each individual task on your docket. You’ll thank yourself later.
Find Your Work Haven
Find one area in your home that you can turn into a dedicated workspace. Make it a space that you are proud of and comfortable working within. Your work haven should be a place where you can focus without any distractions. This will go a long way in helping you maximize efficiency and productivity.
Give Yourself a Break
Working all day in an isolated space can grow trite and can, at times, begin to undermine your success. Be sure to schedule yourself an occasional break to stretch, eat lunch and reset. Taking a break will allow you to come back to your workspace feeling refreshed, recharged and perhaps even a little more inspired than before.
At the end of the day, when tackled with the correct approach, working from home can become your greatest opportunity for maximizing your potential within the most advantageous playing field there is: the one that is designed by you.