How to be productive working from home

From a productivity standpoint, the primary difference between working from home and working in an office is that the latter provides built-in structure and routine while the former does not. That’s the big challenge: intentionally and continuously creating the right amount of structure and routine for you. Some days you need more or less of one or the other in the same way that sometimes the structure of office life seems to suffocate every ounce of your creativity, but other times it is precisely the foundation you need to really get in the zone.

Which brings me to the big gift of working from home: flexibility. Rather than having to work within an imposed, largely unvarying structure and routine, you have the freedom to create, tweak, and adjust your own bespoke solutions.

Below are some tips for doing just that.

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Note: If you’re reading this—as I wrote it—during the coronavirus pandemic, I have a couple of additional tips I’d like to offer you first.

1. Don’t confuse what you’re experiencing now with working from home in general. These are stressful times, and few companies had the infrastructure in place to shift nimbly to remote. If you are suddenly, without notice or preparation, having to work from home, your transition is more fraught than mine was by a lot, and I frankly found mine awfully challenging. So take heart. You’re not doing it wrong; it’s just that what you’re doing is difficult at the best of times.

2. Work with the bandwidth you have, not the bandwidth you wish you had. My colleagues and I are all practiced remote workers. Some of them have been working from home for over twenty years. Even so, we too are struggling with certain types of productivity, namely creative and strategic. But there are other types of productivity that are better suited to the stress of our global situation. As our founder writes, “It might be a good season to get that folder/file sorting done, reset those passwords, or dig into some of those menial tasks that take less mental energy…. When our heads come back, we'll be all the better for having done the things that are hard to do when you're feeling creative.”
   
   Good advice.

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6 tips for productively working from home

If you can, try to implement all six for your first six weeks to two months of working from home.

Tip #1: Create a commute

There’s an upside to that dreaded bus/subway/car ride: It serves as an on-ramp for your mind and body to shift into work mode. Without it, the boundary between “I’m at home” and “I’m at work” blurs or, if you’re new to working from home, disappears altogether, which can leave you struggling mightily to focus on work and then, later, struggling just as mightily to stop focusing on work.

The solution is simple but requires discipline: Immediately prior to beginning work, move your body through space and time, ideally in the same way each day. Take a walk. Do yoga. Go for a run or a bike ride.

The point is not to work out (though yes, exercise is good for productivity); the point is to mimic the physical, point-A-to-point-B movement of your standard commute. Don’t overthink this. It isn’t necessary for you to stay at point B in order for this to work. You simply need to move. Do it for 15 to 30 minutes every workday right before you start working. This is your new commute.

Commute in this new way for long enough and you may find that you don’t need to do it anymore. The boundary between work and home now exists in your mind. Congratulations, you’re a seasoned pro! Even so, there will be times when your mind is overwhelmed, overstressed, overstimulated, and underperforming. Commute. It will help. I promise.

Tip #2: Work first

Once you’ve “commuted,” start working. This too requires discipline, especially at first. If you share your home with others, it can be helpful to get up and get moving before they do, that way you’re not returning from your walk to a television that’s blaring news updates or ending your yoga session just in time to prepare breakfast for little ones. Both of those scenarios will erode the on-ramp effect you’ve just worked to create. Instead, try to get at least a couple of focused work hours in before shifting your attention elsewhere, even briefly. This builds mental momentum in the direction you’re aiming for: workplace productivity.

My colleague explains the science behind this and provides an excellent metaphor for why working first has such an impact on overall productivity:

“... I think of my mind like a freight train pulling heavily-loaded cars: it takes some up-front effort to get it going in the right direction, but once it is, it’s hard to stop it or to change directions.”

The impact is particularly strong when working from home where invitations to switch contexts are more plentiful. Decline those invitations for the first part of your day and you’ll be less susceptible to them for the rest of the day.

Tip #3: Carve out a dedicated workspace

In an ideal world, everyone who works from home would have a separate space in which to do so. A room, a converted garage, a loft, a studio behind the house. Ours is not an ideal world. So pick a spot and—this is the important bit—stick to it. In doing so, you train your mind to recognize that when you’re in that spot, you’re working.

If at all possible, try not to do anything other than work when you’re occupying the spot you’ve chosen for work. Don’t, in other words, work at the kitchen table if you also eat family dinners or play board games with roommates at the kitchen table. Don’t work from your living room couch if that’s also the place where you and your partner watch television every night. By limiting your workspace activities to work only, you strengthen the association between that particular spot and work, making it easier for you to get into the right frame of mind to be productive.

Tip #4: Assign yourself dedicated work hours

Similar to carving out a dedicated workspace, I offer this advice for the same reason that sleep experts advise us to go to bed and wake up at the same times every day: doing so eventually makes the transition from not working (or not sleeping) to working (or sleeping) significantly less effortful.

Tip #5: Plan your days ahead of time

It is—and, really, I cannot stress this enough—so much easier to start working when you don’t have to decide where to begin. At the end of every workday, plan the next one. Use pencil and paper, a to-do list or calendar app, or, if you want to track your time too, use what I use: Daycast. Just get your plan for the day down somewhere so that when tomorrow shows up, you don’t have to fight to reorient yourself.

Tip #6: Use a shutdown ritual

I started using a shutdown ritual after reading about Cal Newport’s in his bestselling self-help book, Deep Work. I didn’t do it with the aim of improving my productivity. I was new to working from home and in what felt like a desperate need to get my personal life back. Because my home was suddenly also my workplace, I felt at the time like my home—along with my ability to relax and kick back in it—was gone. And yes, my shutdown ritual helped, along with my “commute.” But in giving me my downtime back, it also increased my productivity because I wasn’t attempting to work in a burnt out, stressed out, always-on state.

I highly recommend creating and using one for yourself. Here’s how.

Lastly, add to this list as needed.

There are certainly other ideas for being productive while working from home. Some people swear by getting dressed in whatever they would normally wear to the office, for example. It gets them in the right mindset, they say. I don’t do that because A) all of the tips above accomplish the same thing for me, and B) maintaining a professional wardrobe would squander some of the financial reward of working from home. But I digress… the point is that mine aren’t the only tips on offer. Go forth and Google. Try some things. Figure out what works best for you. It is entirely possible to be just as productive at home as you are in the office, if not more.

Photo by Brooke Cagle

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