How to Train Your Brain for Productive Work From Home: 5 Tips
When the Covid-19 first hit the streets a couple of months ago, many companies were forced into remote work in order to keep the business running. Remote work challenges aside, there was a bigger challenge which would shortly hit the morale of nearly every team: the challenge of learning how to work from home and maintain a productivity level similar to that of the office.
As of this writing, shelter- in- place orders around the world have been either significantly relaxed or removed completely. While this is good news and people are venturing outside, the second and the third wave of lockdowns will follow. Until a vaccine for Covid-19 is found or humanity achieves herd immunity, work from home is here to stay. Therefore, it’s vital that we learn from our current experience of being productive at home and be prepared to go back to working from home at any time.
The first few weeks during isolation were great! You could work from home all you wanted! With some productivity inertia from the not-so-distant office environment, it seemed that staying productive at home is easy. Unfortunately, being isolated at home for long periods of time has a lot of dangers and almost all of them decrease your productivity significantly. For example, taking a break and not tracking how much time you’re away can easily offset your schedule and eat into your productive time. It then launches a vicious circle where you have to work late, have less time to unwind and relax or maybe sleep less. Your health and well-being are key to staying on top of things.
So how do you increase productivity and boost your morale when working from home?
Create the Right Environment
Making small adjustments to your apartment or home make a huge difference in keeping productivity up.
Prior to the lockdown, it was hard to notice how the outside environment has shaped the behavior and determined what needs to be done. For example, the office desk helped you to work, meeting rooms gave you space to talk, a trip to a local coffee shop gave you a much needed stroll, bean bags and ping pong area allowed you to relax.
Being in the right space at the right time and in the correct state of mind, was a big part of your day-to-day productivity.
At home, none of these areas exist separately and oftentimes they are represented by the same place, say a couch. This makes your brain really confused as to what exactly you’re trying to do in a specific location: Are you working? Are you relaxing? Both? That’s why dividing your apartment into 3 distinct areas which you dedicate only to a specific type of activity is the way to go. These are: Exercise Zone, Work Zone and Chill Zone.
Jumpstart Productivity
One of the biggest changes I noticed during lockdown was a lack of physical activity and a loss of energy as a result. My fitness tracker showed an average of 1500 steps per day during lockdown, compared to 5000-7000 steps on average before we started to work from home. Coupled with inability to go to the gym or play basketball, this had a big influence on my productivity levels: I would get tired faster, I would lose focus and I would need to take more breaks.
Luckily, physical activity is simple and brings your energy levels up in a very short time. I’ve set up a small area in front of the TV for exercising. I don’t have any equipment at home but YouTube has plenty of exercises which use your own body weight. Coupled with pushups, situps, other-ups and 20-minute walks around the block to “go to work” and to “come back from work” gave me enough activity to be productive throughout the day.
It also boosts your morale as well: by getting something done before your work starts, you have primed yourself for success. If you also made your bed in the morning, you get double points!
Keep it Separated
Having a dedicated place at home where work happens is extremely important if you want to increase your productivity. It does not matter if you have a proper desk and a chair. You can use air mattresses, couches or kneel behind a stool. What matters is the location itself and that you only work or study in that location.
By working from a specific place in your apartment, you train your brain to go into hyper focus mode while it’s there. Minimize distractions in this area and leave only work-related paperwork. Keep your phone on silent or leave it elsewhere altogether and don’t consume any food. This area should be clean and tidy at all times, in order for the brain to go into a maker mode when you’re there.
If at any stage you feel like having a break, even the smallest of all breaks, get up and go to the rest area. There you can spend your 5 minutes checking social media, being otherwise distracted by your phone, replying to friends’ messages or checking a new video from your favorite creator.
Bringing any distractions into your work area will make your brain jumpy and unable to maintain focus, thus making your efforts to increase productivity in vain. Taking a break is all right, taking frequent breaks is also all right, however, simply do it elsewhere in the apartment.
Find the Right Balance
Last but not least an area for rest, relaxation and any hobbies can also increase your productivity and boost your morale. Not only do you have a dedicated area to do something you enjoy, but you can also mentally switch off by being in a different location.
In my apartment this place is the couch. Anything goes here: playing games, watching movies, reading books*, so long as you are fully engaged and immersed in that activity. This is also a good place to catch up with friends and family via Skype or Zoom. Talking and engaging with other people while in the lockdown will help you feel more energized and connected.
If you feel you’re drifting away or become slightly disinterested in the stuff which otherwise brings you joy, switch and do something else. You can exercise, you can walk around the block, you can take a nap or go back to work. It’s easy to overstay here since the focus levels are lower and I found it helps a lot to set an alarm for when your “break” or “rest time” is over. Once the alarm goes off, immediately switch into something else in order to stay productive.
*If you are looking for something new to read, here are some book recommendations by our CEO Casey.
Use What Matters Most to You
Regardless how much advice you can get online, unless it resonates with you and drives you forward, it’s of no use. What lockdown has helped all of us to achieve is to evaluate how we spend our time. By being introspective and looking deeply at what matters the most, you start making small adjustments in your everyday life. No one told you that these changes are needed or that you “must” do them. Somehow you figured them out intuitively and started to act. This urge to do things in a very specific way or without being told is your intrinsic motivation.
You can try figuring out what your intrinsic motivators are on your own by writing down all things you really appreciate and trying to catch a theme among them. Or, you could try a psychologist-vetted online assessment by Attuned (read about us on Business Insider).
When you have an idea of what matters most, try reframing your work tasks with those in mind. For example, if you value Competition, then try to be your absolute best at what you do. This could be either inside the company or relative to your company’s competitors.
These are the few tricks for increasing the productivity which I learned during the lockdown. I’m sure more challenges will follow. For now, maintaining physical and emotional separation between where I am and what I do is second nature. Having these different spaces at home, albeit being less than half a meter apart at times, really helped me to stay productive.
Remember that your human needs for time, location and state of mind have not changed and you need to find a way to fulfill them when working from home.
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