Top 3 productivity tips for working from home
Productivity tips to enhance your productivity at home
Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed a lot of major changes in how people work. The pandemic has made a lot of us work from home. For many, this change has proven to be beneficial, but for some, it has been less so. Working from home is always fun at first, but it can quickly become dull, boring, or chaotic, especially when you don’t have a dedicated space where you can avoid distractions. Adjusting to a new work environment can be quite a challenge, but there are a few things that you can do to make things easier. In this article, we’ll provide a few useful productivity tips to make working from home a more productive and pleasant experience.
1. Invest some time and effort into setting up your perfect work from home office
Working from the kitchen table might seem like a good idea, but it should only be a temporary situation. If your work-from-home office is located in a high-traffic area such as the kitchen or the living room, you are probably having a hard time focusing on your tasks. And this is only natural because you can’t really ask your family members to stop going about with their daily activities. In addition to that, when working in a distracting environment, you might be tempted to do chores, cook something, talk to people, watch some TV, etc. Over time, this chaotic working schedule will have a negative impact on your productivity and it might prevent you from completing your tasks.
To avoid the problems mentioned above, you need to invest some time and effort into creating a nice and quiet work-from-home office. If you don’t have a lot of space in your home, you should consider having a garden pod installed in your outdoor area. A garden pod is an extension of your home, detached from the main house. In other words, it’s a small extra room that you can use in many different ways. In this case, you would use this garden pod as a home office where you’ll be able to work without any distractions. The best thing about having a garden office pod is the fact that you’ll have a private place to focus on your work while also being just a few steps away from your house.
2. Keep your home office organised
First and foremost, try to keep a clean desk. If you are more productive with a messy desk, you can ignore this step. However, most people find it hard to focus when working in a cluttered and untidy environment. Having a clean and well-organised workspace has many important benefits. It will make you look and feel more professional, improve your mental stability, improve focus, make you more productive, reduce stress, and it can even encourage you to eat healthier food.
If you are having trouble keeping your home office tidy and organised, the first step is a thorough decluttering session. Take a page from Marie Kondo’s book, and do away with everything that isn’t useful. Ask yourself if you really need to keep that old keyboard, that box filled with knick-knacks, or those old magazines. Once you’ve managed to get rid of everything you don’t actually need to keep in your home office, you can start taking the next steps towards a more organised work environment. Create a designated spot for tools, one for junk that needs to be sorted, and label things so that you can find anything you need faster. Some people find colour-coding useful, so if you work with a lot of papers and folders, you can try this as well. And last but not least, make a habit of cleaning your desk daily and disinfecting your gadgets.
3. Decorate your office
A clean office is a key to becoming more organised and more focused, but it doesn’t really do much for creativity. Being creative at work is very important because it helps you come up with innovative ideas. Decorating your office can be a fun activity and it can transform a dull and depressing work environment into a space that you actually enjoy spending time in. You can start by choosing some wall art that you really like. And because most garden offices are small, we recommend opting for one large print or a painting to maximize the vertical space. Smaller pictures can give the impression of clutter, and that’s something that we want to avoid.
Studies have found that plants can improve health, reduce the number of sick days, boost productivity and creativity, and reduce stress. So keeping a few low-maintenance plants such as cacti, succulents, spider plants, snake plants, Aloes, Pothos, or ZZ plants is a great idea.
In conclusion
Working from home, when done right, can have a positive impact. If you are still working from the kitchen table, it is about time to make a few big changes. Invest some time into creating a dedicated workspace where you can focus on your work without distractions, keep it tidy and organised, and decorate it with nice wall art and plants, and you will soon notice a boost in productivity and creativity.
