Ten Strategies to Enhance Your Productivity Working from Home or at the Office

What habits have you established to enable your full productivity since you’ve been working from home due to the global pandemic? Or, if you’ve been working virtually for some time now, what practices have you developed to be able to excel outside of a common office location? Given that expert suggests that we’re still experiencing the first wave of the coronavirus – which is accelerating (again) in some places – this question becomes all the more urgent because it suggests that there’ll be no return to the old normal, making this the new one.

I’ve studied the literature on remote work best practices fairly extensively and, because of this, have developed some altered routines that’ve enabled me to be even more productive than when I was office-based. In fact, they’re location-agnostic, so when I return to the office – whenever that’ll be (but certainly not before year-end) – they’ll come with me, as they represent permanent enhancements to my set of personal productivity strategies and tools. In this spirit, then, I share several of them with you in hopes that you’ll find them helpful both in increasing your effectiveness and impact as well as the enjoyment of your creative and contributory process.

First, let’s start with the basics: what can you do to make your home environment a) as comfortable as possible and yet still professional, and b) from a functionality standpoint, as nearly identical as possible to your office workspace (or maybe even more conducive)?

With respect to establishing a comfortable home environment, I’m lucky to have an area in my house that I’ve been using as an office for years, so literally all that I had to do was to tidy it up a bit to make it more presentable and professional. Yet you may not have such a space, so my suggestion is to identify a background that’s either professional by nature or practically blank and/or unidentifiable (so that it doesn’t create any unnecessary distractions). For example, better to be in a place that’s a bit sparse then to reveal your bedroom; so, too, with having a home nexus like the kitchen and its attendant activity always in view.

One of the articles that I read noted that for many colleagues, this is the first time and the only way that they’ve been invited into each other’s homes, so it’s imperative that the environment create the right/best impression. What impression do you want to create for colleagues and, presumably, clients?

In addition to this, what ‘creature comforts’ could you include in your environment to make it sufficiently comfortable and accommodating to enable you to spend 8 to 12 hours a day working in the space? In my case, as I do during my personal time, on occasion I’ll light a candle to provide a little olfactory stimulation and, in what’s an upgrade from my work office, in temperate weather I’ll open the window for some fresh air (which is great until the neighbors’ landscapers and their leaf blowers show up unexpectedly at times).

With respect to outfitting your home office, what can you do to make the set up as familiar as possible – and nearly identical – to your work one? For example, will your organization allow you to bring your work setup – computer, scanner, headset, etc. – home with you? If so, then the only challenge is how to lay it out to encourage your productivity. If not, would you be willing to invest in a setup that would mimic your office one?

In my case, this is meant that I bought the same headset that I use at the office. Because it was a little pricey and I don’t expect to be working from home permanently, I bought a refurbished model at a significant discount and added a warranty, which meant that I was able to procure the same, familiar setup at less than half of the cost. Further, I purchased the identical model of wireless keyboard and mouse that I have at the office, so it’s wonderfully familiar and effective. With respect to scanning capability, I invested in a multi-function printer/scanner that I got on a great sale and that offers a reasonable price per page for printing as well as clear and accessible scanning capability.

All of these investments to enhance my productivity in my home office cost less than $400. Now that I’m in the seventh month of working from home, I consider this modest investment to have had a huge return because it’s enabled me not only to reproduce the setup from my office but actually to make it more conducive to work in my remote one. And I started with a better chair in my home office, so I’m more comfortable in this way, too.

So, again, what can you do to make your home environment a) as comfortable as possible and yet still professional, and b) from a functionality standpoint, as nearly identical as possible to your office workspace (or maybe even more conducive)?

Next, beyond your physical workspace, let’s address your personal work strategy and style. Do you have a particular way in which you organize and conduct your work? If so, is this captured somewhere so that you can review it from time to time and tweak it as you identify new Best Practices to incorporate? If not, trust me, it’ll be a worthwhile investment of your time to take, say, a half-hour to identify your personal work system, including how you organize yourself, how you construct your calendar, etc. With this blueprint for your Personal Organization System clear, you can examine its individual elements and proactively revise and enhance them over time.

For example, do you have a structure for your work week? Chances are that there’re some required activities (i.e., meetings, etc.), but, for the most part, you have a reasonable amount of discretion over how you allocate your work tasks during the balance of your time. Accordingly, it behooves you to study the wisdom of Time Investment Principles (TIPs) – including as I’ve elucidated it here, here and here – to encourage the maximization of your productivity. Developing tools like a Model Week and then tracking your time and engaging in its analysis can offer a continuing stream of opportunities to become ever more effective and impactful in your professional contributions (and the same holds true with respect to your personal commitments as well).

Next, beyond your time, how you organize your work? How do you keep track of the myriad tasks and projects for which you’re responsible? To put a finer point on it, how do you stay on top of the too many emails that we all received nowadays? Etc.

In this regard, I’d like to offer two suggestions:

First, however you choose to keep it – either in paper form or electronically – make sure that you have a written master list of your tasks and projects. I’ve developed a Weekly Task List that I fill out on paper because I’ve found that the physical act of writing these responsibilities down has helped me to be both more aware of them in the short term as well as better positioned to schedule them in order to maximize my productivity. If you choose to keep this on your computer, great: the point is that we all really need to have one, so I encourage you to develop yours in whatever format works best for you.

Second, I’ve learned to engage in a practice that I describe generically as “Organization”: once a week, I’ll invest a modest amount of time – typically no more than 30 to 60 minutes – in reviewing my Weekly Task List to identify which items I’ve completed and which need to be added to the next iteration thereof. Also, I’ll review my email inbox to ensure that I’m aware of all the messages to which I’ve needed to respond and, on occasion, to find ones that I may have missed initially so that I can follow up appropriately. (Once a month, I’ll engage in this practice for a bit longer and review my emails for the preceding 30 to 45 days as a double-check to ensure that I haven’t missed anything.)

In addition to TIPs and clarifying and practicing your Personal Organization System, I’ll share a couple of new Best Practices that I’ve discovered since I’ve begun to work virtually that have helped me to improve both my productivity and the enjoyment of my work meaningfully.

The first concept that I’ll introduce is that of “Time Boxing,” which is the practice of identifying specific times in your work calendar during which to complete specific tasks and/or project work. Further, within each discrete time box, you should include a mix of short-term and/or daily tasks along with specified periods to work on projects that require extended time. In this way, you mix it up a little, keep yourself fresh and address both near-term and longer term responsibilities consistently. You can learn more about this strategy here.

The next concept that I’ll share is that of “Calendar Blocking,” which is the practice of differentiating the time in which you’ll engage in personal work for which you’re accountable from that in which you interact with colleagues and/or clients. You can learn more about this strategy here.

One way to conceive of these two Best Practices working synergistically is that a time box identifies which work activities you’ll address in a given period and a calendar block identifies when, exactly, you’ll do so.

For example, my typical practice for a morning or afternoon is to have a 3-hour “Work Bloc” on my schedule, but within this extended period, I’ll schedule to 2 to 4 different activities in discrete time boxes. In this way, I can work on cleaning up the last few tasks associated with nearly-completed projects – my personal ‘punch list,’ if you will – as well as following up with various constituents about open issues on which were collaborating while also setting aside a discrete amount of time to work on longer-term projects in order to maintain the momentum on these, too.

A third personal productivity concept that I’ll share is that of what I describe as “Disciplined Switching,” which is the practice of stopping your work on one task or set thereof at a predetermined time and then initiating work on a different task or project in order to introduce conscious variation in your focus, which has been shown both to extend and enhance the latter over time.

Don’t get me wrong, this one can be a real challenge to learn, especially for those of us who were steeped in the concept of “Flow” some years ago, as, essentially, it requires us to stop working on one thing even though we may be in a self-perceived, highly productive groove while doing so (i.e., in a state of Flow) and then to switch to another activity, which typically requires us to ramp up our attention on this new area of focus. Again, for us practitioners of Flow, this not only seems counterintuitive but counterproductive as well … but the research suggests that our impressions/feelings are mistaken. You can learn more about this strategy of Disciplined Switching and the research on which it’s based here.

Finally, one more strategy to enable you to deal effectively with the real world in which we’re all interrupted from time to time. In my case, when my CEO calls, unless I’m on a client call or working on something urgent with a tight deadline, I’ll pick up, thereby disturbing my perfectly choreographed schedule for the day, which presents a challenge: how do we get back into the rhythm of working on whatever our calendar dictates?

Here’s where engaging in the practice of “Ready to Resume Planning” can be very helpful: before you begin to address the interruption, be sure to observe the discipline of identifying where you are with respect to completing the task and/or project as well as the next steps that you intend to pursue so that when you’re able to get back to this calendar-dictated focus you’ll know where to start. It sounds so simple and yet its impact can be profound.

Think about it: how many times have you been interrupted, perhaps only for a minute or two, and yet, when you returned to your work, you couldn’t remember exactly where you left off? Until I discovered this Best Practice, the answer for me was too often. Trust me, adopting this practice can really help, including because it only takes a few seconds and virtually everyone who’s interrupted me has been willing to wait for this small bit of time. You can learn more about this strategy here.

OK, there you have it: 10 strategies to help you be more productive working from home (or the office). I hope that you’ll choose to pursue them, not only because it’ll enable you to increase your contribution and impact, but also because it’ll make your work experience more enjoyable as well. Each one of them can help you, but, together, they’re synergistic, enabling you to amplify your professional contribution while improving your experience of the process. (To this end, I’ve found that they can be introduced in a serial way in a relatively short period of time, like, say, a couple of weeks or a month at most.) In this way, this investment in your own growth and productivity can truly be a ‘win-win’ for all involved.

After all, if we’re going to be stuck at home all of the time, including while we’re working, we might as well be as efficient and effective as possible so that we can not only maintain but enhance our productivity and, hopefully, free up time to invest in other activities that enable us to balance our personal and professional lives. Even better, if and when we return to the office, we’ll be that much better than when we left it, and more fulfilled, too….

(Photo credits: https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/change-is-inevitable.html; https://medium.com/@dsilvestre/41-productivity-quotes-that-will-make-you-more-effective-8b2e22c732ee; https://store.hp.com/us/en/tech-takes/7-best-home-office-setup-ideas-telecommuting; https://quotefancy.com/quote/47071/Robin-S-Sharma-Investing-in-yourself-is-the-best-investment-you-will-ever-make-It-will; https://positiveroutines.com/productivity-quotes/; https://positiveroutines.com/productivity-quotes/; https://toomuchonherplate.com/15-powerful-quotes-to-change-the-way-you-think-about-time-and-being-busy/; https://toomuchonherplate.com/15-powerful-quotes-to-change-the-way-you-think-about-time-and-being-busy/; https://www.pinterest.com/pin/101682904073108207/?nic_v2=1a45MsRZj; https://theseekingmind.com/the-teachings-and-wisdom-of-rumi/)