10 Tips To Increase Productivity Working From Home

Working from home has never been more emphasized like the covid-19 period. Gradually, the world is drifting into accepting this new form of working from home. While this new normal has its advantages, it also comes with its baggage of disadvantages. The quest to ensure productivity doesn’t decline while employees work from home.

Ultimately, the measure for effectiveness and efficiency in any organization is productivity; and this is usually easier to deal with when no one has to work from home, but it becomes an ordeal when employees have to work from home.

It is no gainsaying that the temptation to relax and be “lazy” around when working from home could endear the best of employees.
Any employee working from home should avoid modalities that would engender productivity while working outside the conventional office space.

Below are 10 tips that will help you increase productivity while working from home.

 

1. Do not erase the impression that you are going to an office.

The challenge with working from home is that employees may assume that they are not under pressure to complete tasks since no one chases them to complete such tasks. However, an employee who intends to remain productive must ensure that the mindset of an office is maintained while working from home.

Start with the mindset that your workspace is an extension of your office. For no reason should you alter the belief that you are within an office space though you are working from home?

 

2. Create a resumption and closing time.

Creating a resumption and closing time would help trigger your mind to be effective. It means that you already know that you must commence tasks at a particular time, and you must be able to evaluate and quantify the tasks you complete before the scheduled closing time.

 

3. Write your daily schedules and “to-do” list.

Your daily schedules would help you manage your time and hours to do achievable tasks. This in turn improves your productivity.

Carefully plan out your “to-do” list. Ensure you start with the top priority tasks to manage your time adequately.

 

4. Allot time for every task.

When you allow time for every task you have to complete in a day, this conditions your mind that certain tasks have to be completed within a particular time frame, thereby aiding your concentration to complete these tasks within the allotted time.

 

5. Minimize the attention you give to social media.

Many a time, employees assume that surfing through the internet is another way of relaxing, but it isn’t, rather, it drains you mentally. It is another subtle way of mental drain. Surfing the internet would also task your mind and in the end exhaust you before you return to your daily schedule. It would surprise you that most times when you think you would only spend 10 minutes surfing the internet, you would have spent over an hour before you realize that you have wasted so much time.

This does not in any way increase productivity while working from home. Staying away from the internet, particularly social media while working from home is one of the best decisions you would ever take if you intend to be productive while working from home.

 

6. Set your workspace like an office.

Do not fall for the temptation to work on the bed or in the bedroom because you are working from home. If you do, you are most likely to lose productive time to taking too many naps, sleeping off, and many other distractions.

This is why you must ensure that your workspace at home must be meticulously carved out in such a way that it looks like your office. What this would do is that it would help engrain the right attitude to work and because perception oftentimes is formed from the things we see; making your workspace look like an office, befits, if you truly want to be productive while working from home.

 

7. Don’t indulge in personal tasks in the bid to multi-task.

Your work period isn’t a time to indulge in personal tasks. Oftentimes, in the bid to prove that we can multi-task many of us end up adding tasks that are not related to work; and at the end, concentration is lost and employees may end up consuming hours on jobs that would probably have taken only a few minutes.

Most employees who indulge in personal tasks while working from home are prone to make more mistakes, send wrong mails, waste more time on tasks because of their divided attention.

 

8. Create time for breaks.

The goal of every employer is to increase productivity and not time-consuming on a task. This means that if breaks would improve an employee’s productivity, which would in turn help achieve the organization’s goal, then creating time for breaks is exigent.

Your break period as an employee isn’t a time to wear yourself out with personal chores but recalibrate your energy for effectiveness. As an employee, taking short time breaks would make you seamlessly creative and this would ultimately improve your productivity.

 

9. Report to your manager at the resumption and close of work.

By reporting resumption and closing time to your manager/supervisor, you are not only ensuring that you are productive but also accountable; and rarely would you see any employee who is accountable and responsible that isn’t productive.

Owing to your effort in reporting resumption and closing time to your manager or supervisor, that becomes one of the means through which you can stimulate productivity while working remotely.

Reporting your resumption and closing time isn’t just what is needed to be productive, you must also ensure your resume is early enough and close only when you have rounded off assigned tasks you mandate on yourself or the ones mandated on you by a superior officer.

 

10. Be honest with yourself

No man who is true to himself will ever fail at his venture. In being productive, employees must ensure that everything listed above is things they would be faithful to, else there would be no reason to identify these tips when they are not practiced.

Working from home can sometimes afford employees the opportunity to do many things unchecked, especially things that are not related to work. An employee who intends to increase productivity must be strong-willed enough to stick to actions and patterns that would boost your performance and increase your productivity.