Want to Work Better from Home? Build a Routine

Intro

The remote working trend in the corporate world has come to some relief for many who wish to work at the comfort of their home.

Well, the scene is set and you have your laptop on your working space as you sip that coffee or any fluid in a peaceful morning aiming at maximum productivity. However, more often than not, you barely achieve optimal productivity.

While working from home feels like the most serene environment to work from, it is at times even harder than working from your enterprise’s office.

In this article we will review the reasons why working from home can be harder and the productivity hacks to change this narrative.

Understand that the Office and Home are Two Different Places

Whether you are a newbie in remote working or have spent years of a career working from home, there remains a great difference between your home and workplace while tasking. The difference is felt when you have a switch in working from the office to home and vice versa with home improvmement tips in Sydney.

In most cases, you will struggle to work at home since it doesn’t feel like the natural place of work you might be conditioned to. For many, home is their safe haven to relax after long hours of work. It is also the center of personal life offering a personal space with oneself, friends, and family.

So, what are the most prevalent challenges people face working from home?

Challenge 1: Making the Big Transition from Office to Home

Until you start working from home and have it present you with an entire set of problems, you will feel that working at home is the solution to your productivity and other workplace problems.

At home, you fight the biggest monsters- distractions and poor time management. According to Maurie Backman, the troubles of working from home can be summed into pressure, social interactions, and structure.

Working alongside other people builds a sense of camaraderie with your fellow co-workers. Here you understand the challenges that all of you face, supporting each other, and providing the much needed social interaction and attachment at work.

Unlike at the workplace, you can barely replicate this at your home. Interactions with your loved ones will not bring the true value you chase like interacting with co-workers. The specific purpose, that is work, offers true value in interacting with co-workers as opposed to your friends and family.

Beyond the horizon of social interactions, working from the office offers you a feeling of structure and greater motivation to have your work goals accomplished. Hardly will you feel like turning on the stereo, or do some time-wasting personal stuff in the office.

As a library is the optimal quiet and serene place to study, the office makes the most optimal place to work. With no physical separation of your personal life and work, it will prove difficult to mentally achieve the best state to work from home.

Challenge 2: Life Changes

For veterans in remote working, the challenges might be more external than internal with working from home. With the change in your living situation, you may find it quite difficult to maintain the same productivity and achieve goals.

May it be a recent marriage or a newborn in the family, work will be left in jeopardy while working from your residence. With a person you care for or wish to spend quite some amount of time with, the temptation becomes too huge leaving less focus on the job.

However, this doesn’t mean that working from home will always lead to an epic failure in terms of productivity! There is always a way to turn bad days into the best days, in this case, a bad work location to the perfect one for oneself. The simplest but greatest way to turn around the whole narrative about working from home is making a daily routine.

So, What is a Routine?

The term routine refers to the series of stuff one does in a specific order, based on the activities and time of the day. In other terms routine means the normal way we handle our daily tasks and activities on our to-do list. We consciously and unconsciously have some routines in our day to day life such as our hygiene routine, our working times, or when to handle laundry.

Like how bad habits form easily and become difficult to break, a bad routine will offer quite a challenge in bringing the best in you at work. However, bad routines can be turned into better habits resulting in better use of our time.

Why Do We Need a Routine?

The number one impact of a routine in our lives is having our minds and bodies become predictable. For short bursts of life, spontaneity remains crucial but for a sustainable lifestyle, a routine will form a structure for a reliable life.

With a good routine comes tons of benefits including:

• Better decision making
• Increased productivity and focus
• Increased achievement of goals
• Improved health
• More control over personal time
• Reduced pressure and stress
• Better sleep
• Ability to cope with difficult situations

While there are many more benefits of a routine, the above-listed benefits offer enough reason to consider having one.

How to Create a Routine

While creating a routine might be simple, you will need to invest both time and perseverance. The following are the three steps towards creating an optimal routine for your remote working needs.

#1- Plan! Plan! Plan!

You might be required to decide what you need covered. In this case, your work goals will reign. Well, set a goal for your work schedule. While there is much to handle, it is advisable that we start small. Have your work routine planned in phases.

The number one step is answering the questions of where and when you will work. After this, you can improve your time routines as per the day’s sections, that is, morning, afternoon, and evening, hence having everything fall into place.

#2- Implement

While most of the people will make plans about their work to achieve a routine, only a few will implement it. If you plan on achieving major dreams that might have you under pressure, the implementation process will always be a problem. Therefore, try to have not much in your routine. After all, a routine is all about habits that you can repeat, hence avoid tasks that will lead to burn-out daily.

#3- Evaluate

To set yourself apart from ordinary successful people, you might need to conduct an audit on how you used your time and what goals were achieved. Achieving most of your goals means that you were able to get the best from the routine. Expect not perfection, but incremental improvement.

What are Some Myths about Work From Home Routines

With remote working gaining extra popularity in recent days, many people have lots of ideas about what it is like. Notably, most of the ideas reflect not the experience of working from home. You might need to clear your mind off these myths.

Myth 1: You Don’t Have to Dress Up for Work

To some, working from home is as easy as waking up, rolling out of the bed, and heading to your laptop in your pajamas for work. You don’t even have to lace up your shoes! They believe that you need not worry about hygiene, and dressing up since your boss and co-workers won’t be seeing you. While you can do this, it is a terrible idea!

There is a need to get ready for the day, even if you won’t be out there to impress that boss, client, or co-worker. Here, you can choose to dress up in a manner that you can answer a video call, saving your expensive suits and ties for the meetings.

Myth 2: Your Schedule is 100% Flexible

Many people believe that since no specific hours constrains you, you can do all that pleases you so long as you have work done at the end of the day. This is a lie! From time to time, your boss and co-workers might need you anytime during working hours. You will also have deadlines to meet and expected output to deliver too.

Your freedom while working from home is at your personal time and not anywhere during working hours. Therefore, you might need to rise up early or squeeze time later during breaks and after work to handle personal stuff just as anyone working from an office.

Myth 3: You Will Strike a Work-Life Balance Automatically

Many people assume that since you’re at home more often, you have loads of time at your disposal to do all that you desire. After all, you skip long unnecessary work hours and commute. Well, you’re wrong!

Unlike what the myth proposes, working from home might have you struggling with overworking. This happens especially for beginners as they try to set limits and find the ideal schedule. With no definitive line to separate working space and living space, there is a higher likelihood of messing that balance from time to time.

Therefore, it is up to oneself to make time for both work and home life. Unlike at the office, no one will be breathing on your shoulder to see things happen in the right way. When responsibility calls, you need to answer!

Five Tips for Developing an Optimal Work From Home Routine

We all have to start somewhere when it comes to working from home. The following tips will help you build a routine to take you through your remote working achieving better results.

#1- Manage White Noise

Once you start working from home, you will realize the absence and miss white noise from the office. You can hardly get that low level of background noise you get while working from home. Studies have shown that some people, especially those who struggle to pay attention, are quite reliant on white noise since it helps them gain focus on some mental tasks.

With the absence of white noise for many, comes poor concentration at work. While we need silence during intense focus moments, too much noise will otherwise create more distractions for you. To fix this need, you can put some background music while working or turn the fan on, open the window, or even turn on the television. However, ensure it's not your favorite station to avoid being tempted to watch.

If it comes at a time the noise distracts you, you can turn the devices off. Some noise is part of your workday and what makes a balanced environment for work.

#2- Punctuate Your Workday

To focus in the best way, you have to appreciate the need for breaks. Stop gritting your teeth, forcing yourself to work without stopping. According to research conducted on the work to breaks ratio, findings show that we can only focus for about an hour with some five to twenty minutes break.

During the breaks, you might need to tune your mind off work. Have yourself do something else such as have a snack, talk to someone, check your emails, or even do some yoga. Whatever you choose, don’t be in the same position you used while working.

#3- Refrain from Working Strategically

When working, you will need to set limits for yourself on when and when not to work. Working all day covering every single hour of the work time will lead to burnout. You need to set some dedicated start and finish time for your work goals.

Use a desktop version of Gmail and other communication tools that enable you to turn off notifications or snooze emails. This way, if you need focus time, it’s easy to activate and disable.

Notably, dedicated working hours are a perfect productivity hack for sustainable remote working routines. With working hours defined, one can separate work life from personal life at home ensuring they don’t cross each other. Some flexibility with work hours is allowed. For example, you can stretch your time temporarily to accommodate finishing an enormous project. However, you should ensure you return to your normal working time after the project is done.

#4- Prepare Ahead

Planning ahead of time is a perfect way to have your work goals achieved. Notably, this aids you to limit the number of decisions you have to make at a single moment. In return, this reduces fatigue from daily decisions. Better decision-making is also achieved since you have adequate time to think about them hence resulting in a rational idea.

A schedule calendar might be a great tool for those who love having deadlines and time blocks. However, ensure that you are realistic with your time limits and expectations. Activity-based planners can write down tasks they need to handle on a given day. Preparing a night before feels like the most optimal time to have this productivity hack offer great results.

#5- Organize What You Can Control

Working from home with a room filled with your loved ones is quite a problem. You can hardly control them in the most optimal way while you work. Therefore, there is a need for you to focus on what you can control, organizing it to your level best. If it's noise, you can choose some noise-canceling headphones or find a peaceful home office space

You can reduce distractions to avoid affecting your ability to work. Also, if you need to handle some personal responsibilities at home you ought to embrace flexibility. Through this, you can find an optimal way to handle your work life and personal life without many struggles.

Final Thought

While working from home might have been perceived as easy, it offers quite a share of problems especially when it comes to your productivity. However, we can always devise ways to fix the challenges we face. With the above tips, one can train themselves to achieve the maximum of what their daily routine has to offer in terms of work goal achievements.