Working from home isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I get it. It’s a MAJOR adjustment to what you may be use to. Either due to social distancing or finding yourself on a new whacky schedule balancing personal and professional endeavors. Relax, you got this! No one knew it would be this difficult to turn a few weeks into a few months of this “new normal”– so don’t sweat the small things.
I admit, I went into working from home thinking about how I would have the chance to balance everything in my life now that I didn’t have a solidified 9 to 5 looming over my head and all of the drama any office would yield. Guess what? Life smacked me with a RUDE wake-up call. Four-Corners Fatigue is a real thing. Netflix Binging is a real problem. Productivity Overload is plaguing us all. You’re not alone! I too have answered text messages with wrong dates, forgot what time it was, and lost myself in one of my favorite shows. And guess what? Ya girl moved on and made up for it.
So put some cute sweatpants on, brush your hair, and pull up a chair — it’s time to get you out of this funk.
get yourself a dedicated workspace
One of the coveted reasons people love to work from home is the security and comfort of their home. This is where you live, where your memories are made, and where this space is purely… you. It’s easy to be lured into the happenings of your day, but Four-Corners Fatigue is a real thing. You’re essentially “stuck” in four corners of your home, the same space you spend your not-working time in. Do you know how tiring that can be? Distractions, too much comfort, too much temptation — one of the first things you gotta do is find a little piece of heaven just for you.
Maybe it’s the dining room table, maybe it’s a dedicated spare bedroom turned office — it’s important to cultivate a space where you can eliminate the rest of the world so you can focus. Bring in everything you need to be productive (earphones, water, snacks, etc) so you will not have to get up and get distracted on the short trek to your fridge. Parents: it’s soooo hard to allocate time for yourself, I get it, but this is one of the most important boundaries you can set when you work from home.
Another suggestion, if you have a patio or lanai, is to get out of the house and breathe some fresh air. We recently started renovating our back yard and it has been a struggle to find any reason (besides the heat) to hate having fresh air and sunshine streaming down on you. 🌤
say no to Netflix
It’s a little secret, right? While you’re hard at work, maybe it’s okay to sneak in that last episode of Tiger King, right? Wrong. There’s a huge debate on the productivity of listening to the television or music while working, but for me? I find it entirely distracting. If you have an occupation that requires you to work on the computer, it can be difficult to focus on written words while listening to Michael Scott explain why he’d like to be feared and loved. Sitcoms, especially, are narrated as part of a story — something you have to pay attention to or get sucked into by acting. If you need to play something while you work, try listening to music (once again, I would suggest instrumental pieces) or informational podcasts where it is okay to zone in and out.
Additionally, one issue is our desire to stop what we are doing, turn and face the television. While this break could be useful, it is easy to get stuck and try to “finish an episode” (or two). Trust me, been there — done that!
lists, lists, lists!
You are now carefully balancing on a tightrope of personal and professional productivity. The best way to counter feeling a productivity overload is to make lists. By making lists, you are able to stop and assess what is needed to be done — to physically have something to reference. This allows clarity on organizing a game plan to get things going.
For me, what has worked is having 2 MAJOR professional and personal goals finished once a day. Maybe it’s finishing a rough draft of a logo or finally painting my kitchen (it’s only been on my to-do list for a year) — by having major goals, you’ll find it easier to accomplish smaller goals leading up to it to “finish” those goals. An example would be researching competitors logos, coming up with color schemes, trying new fonts, and designing my first rough logo draft for a client. Another example is looking up paint colors, checking our closet for supplies and making a list of what will be needed, and then finally ordering the colors. These better prepare me to complete the bigger tasks because I had smaller tasks supporting them.
be firm on social media
Social media can connect us and also disconnect us. It’s easy to find the task of mindlessly scrolling to be just… tiring? I noticed for the first week or two I was on my social media channels far more than I should have been. I needed to feel connected, to feel as if I wasn’t losing a crucial social aspect of going out to work. It didn’t help. For me, it showcased a lot of more bigger issues with social media — the mindless aspect of it and the imposter/comparison aspect of it.
After my third week working from home fully, I decided to limit my time on my phone. My screen-time is down 30% and I feel a better sense of getting my goals accomplished for the day.
Tell your friends to text you later, don’t spend your lunch on Instagram, and make sure to keep up with your lists. We are all feeling this social distancing structure in different ways and it is important to take strides to keep your mental health and social outlook on check. Your phone is the absolute biggest reason that productivity could be lost so make sure to keep it out of reach on most work hours. It’s hard — but I promise you will notice an improvement in productivity!
know when to “turn off work”
This is basically writing for myself. I’m a workaholic — I use to say that proudly, as if I’m earning some invisible brownie points. I take my work seriously and I keep that mindset going long into the night, far past any time I would be paid during a 9 to 5. It’s hard to turn off, I totally get it, but you need to learn to leave work at a suitable time and make the shift to “personal” time.
Some tips on turning off work mode is pretty simple.
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Set a designated stop time and STICK to it unless you see wrapping a project up within 10 minutes. The world won’t end if you don’t get a report over if you’re only halfway through with it. If you are being mindful of your time with the aforementioned tips, you should be able to reasonable understand if you’re close to finishing one of your bigger goals. I am all for getting a job done, I can’t even lie, but unless it’s crunch time — you have to learn when to turn your work off.
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Turn the computer off, put away the tools, and move on with your day. By physically turning off the computer or putting away your work tools, you are taking an initiative to put your plan into action. This is a physical boundary that will prevent you from turning the laptop on when you snuggle on the couch “just to check e-mails”.
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Make dinner-time personal. Don’t talk about work for a majority of your dinner-time with your loved ones. This doesn’t need to drag on unless asked. It’s good to be clued in, but by discussing work you are only blurring the line between work and personal time. Talk about positive things — hobbies, GOOD news, new things like tv episodes, movies, or video games, and what you hope to accomplish in the upcoming weeks. You’re strengthening your relationships while clearly turning “off” that work brain.
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Do not have e-mail on your phone unless you have to! This is HUGE. It’s absolutely easy to feel a buzz and check your phone only to see a last minute, after hours e-mail. The e-mail will be there in the morning, I promise. Unless there’s something crucial, it can absolutely wait.
With these productivity tips and hacks, you just reinvented the way your day to day goes. Can you imagine if you had a more structured day to knock off your big goals? These tips were curated for you (and me) in mind! If you have any success stories, comments, or feedback, please feel free to comment below!
