Embrace Resilience While You Work Remote With These Tips

Working from home. Who hasn’t dreamt of that? Isn’t it great to be able to arrange your schedule whatever you choose, spend the entire day in your pyjamas, work quietly from home without interruption from coworkers, and not have to spend an hour every day stuck in traffic? The majority of those who want to work from home hold this opinion about it.

However, whether you work for yourself or are among those who have the option to work from home, you must be aware that the idea that most people have of working from home is unrealistic.

Although this technique is fantastic and I wholeheartedly recommend it, the reality is that there are several significant obstacles and it’s not always as easy as it seems. Consider the scenario where you spend the entire day by yourself, away from clients or coworkers, and you have to push yourself to get things done because no one is there to give you pressure.

Alternatively, make an effort to ignore all the distractions and temptations found at home, such as the TV, sofa, chores, family, and pets. It takes a great deal of organisation and self-control to work from home and be truly productive. If not, you will either lose money if you’re an entrepreneur or have to return to the office right away if you’re an employee.

What can you do when working from home and faced with these obstacles to maintain focus?  Consequently, we have compiled a list of some of the best tips to be productive and efficient while working from home.

Create Your Dedicated Workspace

If you truly want to be productive while working from home, you must have a separate place or room to establish your home office. You will have great difficulty motivating yourself and performing at your peak if you work all day from your bed, on the couch, or at your kitchen table.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with it and it’s possible to be productive from one of these locations on occasion, it’s not a winning solution in the long run. Just like you don’t work full-time in the employee cafeteria at work, you also shouldn’t work at your kitchen table, in your bed, or on the couch full-time

Instead, you should set up a separate workspace reserved for your professional activities. This will help you stay more focused by avoiding sources of distraction like the couch (which is an invitation to rest and listen to TV), and then make a clear separation between your personal and professional life.

When you are in your workspace, you will know that you are in “work” mode. If you can, it’s best to reserve a separate room in your home to set up your office. My brother, who works from home full time, for example, converted the garage at home into a private office. This is his professional area where he does his work and meets his clients. 

Transform Your Workspace Into An Inspiring Haven: Where Ideas Flourish And Productivity Soars

Once you have defined your home workspace, another important aspect is to organise this space well and make it an inspiring place. Simply put, you’ll want your workspace to inspire you and help you concentrate on producing your best work.

Regretfully, I am aware of some business owners who dislike their home office despite working there full-time. They find it difficult to focus and be productive since they dislike the décor and mood. To get inspiration and drive, they even feel obliged to work outside, in places like cafés, libraries, or “co-working” spaces.

This is unfortunate because working from home has the benefit of allowing you to remain comfortable in your own house rather than needing to go outside. To prevent this from happening to you, make sure you create a beautiful and inspiring workspace that will make you want to spend time there.

What Should You Do?

Put furniture that inspires you, colours that produce the emotional state you are looking for, decorative accessories that speak to you as well, and greenery. Make your work office an inspiring and motivating place

Dress Up For Success: Elevate Your Style With Confidence

Getting dressed at the beginning of your workday is another piece of advice, although it may seem simple, it is quite true, especially if you work from home. You don’t have to put on your best clothes or spend a lot of time on them, but the truth is that preparing to start your work day will help you motivate yourself.

Take a shower, have breakfast, brush your teeth, and put on something comfortable but try to avoid your pyjamas. This way your brain will be more awake and will understand that the time has come to get to work.

Even though it might be tempting to spend the entire day in your pyjamas (and there’s nothing wrong with that if you can be productive in your pyjamas), when you get dressed and make the transition from “hanging out at home” to “work mode,” you’re communicating to your subconscious. Psychologists refer to this idea as “embodied.”

What we wear affects how other people see us, but what matters more is how we feel about ourselves. What we wear affects not just how we act and think, but also how focused and productive we are. To put it briefly, you can increase your productivity by wearing comfortable clothing instead of a suit.

Embracing Time In Isolation

When we tell ourselves that it’s impossible to be bored at home and wish we could work from home, we don’t envision this. However, it is a genuine difficulty that many people may encounter, particularly those who are inherently drawn to relationships. I, for one, am an introvert who prefers to be by myself during the day.

On the other hand, I think of my partner who likes to be surrounded by people and it is not always easy for him to work alone from home. The good news is that you don’t have to be alone all day and there are several ways to break the isolation to be more productive. You can, for example:

• Meet colleagues or clients at your home office
• Schedule teleconferences with your colleagues
• Go out to meet someone in a café or restaurant at lunchtime
• Go to work in a “ co-working ” space to feel less alone
• Go to work in a cafe 
• Taking a break to go to the gym in the middle of the day
• Schedule appointments outside the office during the day
• Go for a short walk outside

Don’t be alone all day and find ways to get out of your home office and meet people during the day. You will then break this feeling of isolation and you will be more productive.

Rise With Motivation: A Call To Energise Your Day

You wake up, get out of bed, wash your face, have coffee, sit at your desk, and there is no way to concentrate. What is happening?

The first few times you may think that getting up 10 minutes before your starting time and teleworking in your pyjamas is a good idea, but some studies assure that in the long run, this is not the case, since the way we dress can affect your mood.

Work Techniques For Success 

At first, you can choose to use tools that help you organise your work in a way that makes it much easier for you to cope. For example, you can use the Pomodoro technique.

In the Pomodoro technique, you work in blocks of different minutes, separated by short breaks. After completing all time fragments, you enjoy a longer rest time. Therefore, it makes a work day much more bearable. It is a perfect resource for those who have a flexible schedule.

Respect Your Closing Time

As much as possible, you must respect your work completion time. This will help you stay motivated and not work extra hours. Finishing much later than your closing time, or continuing to work without being able to disconnect, outside of your workday, generates exhaustion in the long run. So it’s much better to finish on time and tackle pending tasks with motivation the next day, don’t you think?

Take Charge: Your Primary Call to Action

We know that for many, working from home, without supervision, makes the temptation to take longer breaks, check the phone, or procrastinate greater. But we assure you that falling into these habits at first is a big mistake in the long run.

Silence Your Notifications

One of the best tips we can give you is to silence your devices when you need to focus. You can even activate do not disturb mode, sometimes a small vibration or notification LED can be distracting.

Move Your Devices Away

If you find that at first, it is difficult for you not to check your notifications, even if you have them disabled, I recommend that you keep your mobile devices away.

If you can’t resist checking Instagram stories, sending messages, or even checking to see if you have notifications, I recommend that you keep your phone in another room and only check it during breaks.

Use Tools

Technology can be your best ally, apart from using work techniques, you can also use tools like Slack, GitHub, Microsoft teams, Zoom, Google drive, Dropbox, toggl, etc.to facilitate working from home.

One of the essential tools is time control tools, such as Sesame Time,Timecamp, Hubstaff, etc. With this type of tool, you can easily manage your time efficiently, know how much time you have dedicated to each task, and even know what your colleagues are working on or if they are in the office or outside of it.

Take Breaks For Better Focus

One way to avoid distractions is to take breaks from time to time. These breaks are intended for rest. Therefore, these are times to attend to some other task or simply look out the window. For example, we can work in time slots between 25 and 60 minutes in a row. It is not advisable to work for more than an hour straight without a break, but this, of course, will depend on the person and the task to be performed.

 After those minutes of work, it would be good to rest between 5 and 15 minutes. We can also be inspired by the Pomodoro technique.

Prioritise Rest For Concentration

Let’s remember that while we are concentrating working, the brain consumes glucose, which it replenishes while we rest. For this reason, a shorter study or work time with breaks is more effective than doing everything continuously and without breaks, since the capacity for attention and concentration decreases as the day goes by.

During the breaks, we can get up and stretch a little, change rooms, or do some other brief tasks that help us disconnect a little, for example reading a social network, visiting the children,  having coffee, etc.

Enhance Focus: Experiment With These Techniques

To improve our ability to concentrate, we can dedicate a few minutes a day to doing any of the following tasks related to mindfulness exercises:

• We can concentrate for 1 minute on breathing. If we disconnect, nothing happens, we return to breathing again and focus only on it.
• On the other hand, we can choose an object from the house and focus our attention only on contemplating it for a couple of minutes. We can also look for the differences between two identical images, solve sudokus, word searches, etc.

As we have seen, working from home is not an idyllic landscape, but it is not an impossible mission either if we know how to put some keys into practice. In the learning process, we must allow ourselves to make mistakes, take notes, and try to do better next time. After all, there is always room for improvement.

When you work from home, you can easily get distracted by household chores, personal priorities, and even friends and family. To focus more effectively, you have to set boundaries.

Stay Focused With Mentoria

Being able to work from home is a true luxury. However, this is not without its difficulties. You must develop good working habits if you want to work from home and be both focused and productive.

You can accomplish this by putting these practical strategies into practice, which will enable you to overcome obstacles and fully capitalise on this exceptional opportunity.

Discover your strengths and areas for growth with Mentoria’s career guidance. Whether you’re looking to excel in your current role, explore a new one in your industry, or switch to a completely different field, our counsellors will create a personalised action plan for you. With 3 streams, 850+ courses, and 12,000+ careers, we help you find your perfect fit. Call us to speak with career mentors and kick-start your journey toward a happy and successful future.