Hisham Sarwar
“When you are focusing, you’re actually blocking your access to the diffuse mode. And the diffuse mode, it turns out, is what you often need to be able to solve a very difficult, new problem”. Barbara Oakley.
Working from home can be either fantastic or fraught with peril at the same time. The possibilities of working from home and sticking to a schedule aren’t easy. Setting your own hours, taking breaks when needed, running errands as required, procrastinating work projects can even turn your profession into a curse. It happens because nobody is around you to hold you accountable.
You cannot schedule your daily work because it takes discipline to adhere a routine. The offline and online distractions just slow you down and make you unproductive for your work time. Working from home is faced with myriad challenges and the biggest drawback is that people are unable to identify these challenges on daily basis.
When you have pending work projects at hand, your day drift pass in a flash. The distractions of your surrounding do not give you much time to do quality work. Therefore it’s best to understand the real priorities at the time of work. Identify your challenges and then built strategies to beat them.
Following are the few tips that can help you make your work at home more productive.
Develop a proper framework:
Life is not like sitting leisurely in your backyard idly writing or not writing. You will have to set some parameters in order to make the quality of your life and work better. Millions of people dream about working from home but when it turns into a reality, they feel more stressed out than ever. As they do not keep an everyday schedule therefore project deadlines, writing, email, etc. haunt them throughout the day.
Working from home is supposed to give you more time to get things done, embrace the blessing of early morning hours, and try to complete more work as productivity is at peak in those hours.
Get refreshed:
Waking up early can be sometimes difficult but we can exercise and meditate to eliminate the morning sickness. Dress up neatly and have a healthy breakfast before starting your work. You might not have to go to office and meet any of the colleagues, but dressing up neatly and having a satisfied stomach will make you feel more energized and fresh. You can focus on your work without peeking into the fridge all day long.
Avoid Multi-tasking:
Multi-tasking has become a catastrophe for the younger generation; they want to accomplish everything at the same time. The bombardment of information to your mind leads to a lose control over everything and the system begins to fall apart.
Stay calm and do one thing at a time. Start with one project and get it completed. You can become an efficient work-from-beast if you focus on your every task at a time instead of multi-tasking.
Prioritize:
Do you ever just forget the things that are very important? Or people have to chase you to get work done? This all happens when we do not make a proper to-do-list. To-do-list is essential if you want to overcome all such problems. Write down tasks all in one place and prioritize which one you will want to do first. It will help you to save work overload.
Pray five times a day:
Praying is vital to Muslims but along with the announcement of faith, prayer gives us peace of mind which relieves anxiety and stress. It grants clarity of mind to feel at ease in one’s life. Say it five times a day and you will gain inner peace and tranquility for the rest of your life.
Concentrate on work: Avoid Distractions
You cannot look at the light but you cannot look at anything else without it.
It is very much easy for us to get easily pushed off by the slightest interruptions during work. It happens because we are not attentive to our work 100% all the time. It is better to maintain a positive focus at work no matter what is going around.
Consider your focus as the key for attaining future success. Walk through the usual obstacles may it be phone or social media distraction and listen to the voice that leads to the right direction.
Also See: Digital Stress is bad, here is how it happens and how it can be avoided.
Taking breaks can make you happier:
Deactivating and reactivating your goals allow you to stay focused.
Sometimes you are too busy to take a break. The ideas are flowing in your mind and you feel great. But this situation never lasts forever; soon you start slouching on your seat and feel your shoulders numb. You demand an extended focus from your mind and body, but unfortunately it does not happen. You can fix this condition by taking a pause. Small breaks will make you work more efficiently and productively.
Stop swinging with the emails:
Every email you send demands an email back. You then reply back that email and keep swinging with it all day. Do not waste time in checking your emails all the time. Make it a habit of checking your email only once a day. Give short but polite replies and avoid writing stuff which demands an answer every time. This will save you a lot of time and you will focus on your work more efficiently.
Group similar activities:
It is better if you group conference calls, Skype calls and in-person coffee meetings. Give a specific amount of time to chats and do your rest of the work by not getting disturbed again and again.
Get some fresh air:
Try to spend time outdoors at least once a week. The long working hours make you tired physically and mentally. Go outside and stay away from flashing screens as much as possible. This activity will energize you for the rest of the week.
