Staying Focused When You're Working From Home

First of all, I hope that you all are keeping yourselves and you family safe.

Secondly, as you might noticed, the several organizations are adopting a policy of working from home to help stop spreading this epidemic virus.

Unfortunately I am not a doctor or a scientist with enough knowledge to create the cure of COVID-19 but as an IT guy I decided to get together few tips and recommendations on how to work from home in a efficient manner so we can move on in a normal business day, as much as we can.

Working from home can be highly productive, but it can also go badly wrong. Without a proper office space, a prioritized schedule, and on-the-spot supervision, it's all too easy to be distracted, there are several challenges to consider if you're going to work from home:

• Home-based work comes with its own distractions, especially if other people – or even pets – are nearby.
• You may struggle to be productive when you're unsupervised.
• Working from home can create an "always on" mindset, causing people to work too long and too hard.
• Consider whether working from home is really for you. It may provide a welcome respite from a busy office environment, but it could lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation in the long term.

In order to face these challenges, you'll need to create suitable conditions, and also get into the right habits, to keep focused and effective throughout every day you work from home.

The distractions of home, along with the isolation that often comes with remote working, can cause you to lose focus and to damage your productivity. 

Here are five key ways to stop that happening:

1. Self-motivation: techniques can help you to boost your confidence, think positively, and set clear goals. 
2. Minimize distractions. Which distractions tend to affect you most? Maybe you get caught up doing household chores, or suffer interruptions from family or friends. Beating these distractions could be as simple as shutting the door! 
3. Reward yourself. Find ways to make each task more enjoyable and rewarding in itself, as well as giving yourself "treats" when they're done. For example, create a prize for every task completed successfully, like your favourite coffee of a simple walk in the backyard.
4. Say NO to procrastination. Think carefully about which notifications to keep on, and which to mute until later. Allocate time slots for checking your phone. A great power comes a great responsibility (Uncle Ben, 1962). That's also a good tip within the office too by the way! :)
5. Know what you need to acchieve. Along with short-term, task-related goals, make sure that you're also clear about the wider goals like quarter targets, half targets, os you keep a good tracking on those. Keeping these in mind will motivate you to do your best work, whatever your location.
6. Create boundaries. If possible, set up a workspace that's separate from your home space. This should make it easier to shut out the everyday distractions of home life, and to cut off from work at the end of each day.
7. Dress up like you are at the office That's nor mandatory, but it works with me, it changes my mindset.
8. Set break reminders. I use one of these fitness watches that tells me every hour to have a break and walk 250 steps, you might think that I am exaggerating but it really does RESET on my motivation.

Keep communicating efficiently with clients and your management so tasks and activities keep running normally.

Sometimes it is not possible to create a proper space, like a workspace with a fancy desk, printer, etc, so do your best to be comfortable, because you are going to spend the hole day in your "Home Office".

Those are few tips that I actually do when working from home and that helps a lot, I hope that can help you too.

It was a bit long, apologies for that! ;)

Cheers

Abilio

References:

• The Remote Worker's Guide to Excellence (Dztosi Eryck K.)
• How to Declutter Your Home or Work Office to Improve Productivit (Sarah Adams)