Beating the Myth of Home Office Productivity
By: Timothy Lebon
Tags: Personal Development, Habit Building, Programming, Time Management, Home Office

For some of us, it’s really hard to stay focused and productive while working from home. Distractions are everywhere and our mental health suffers from less exercise and a lack of social interactions. I put together some productivity and mindfulness tips that have proven to be very helpful in my everyday life.

The home office can be a minefield of distraction and wasted time if we aren’t careful. It’s important to treat it like a real office and to be serious about the best ways to get work done. Here are some sure-fire ways to boost your home office abilities during quarantine and eventually convincing your boss that remote work can be productive and beneficial for your company.

Make a list. Better: Make it the night before

There are studies on the benefits of list-making. I am a big proponent of it as well- whenever I talk about productivity it is usually my first suggestion. When we make a written list we are keeping ourselves aware and responsible for our tasks.

This is true of people trying to quit smoking or go to the gym or any other goal. An intention statement is important for the work getting done. A (hand-) written list behaves in the same way. It keeps you responsible for its contents and it allows you to remove the burden from your brain of having to keep all of them in mind.

Doing it the night before will even improve the helpfulness. The to-dos will be integrated into your subconscious when you have a full night rest to prepare for them, allowing you to face them with a more considered understanding than if you write them down first thing in the morning.

Certainly, first, keep a todo list, and secondly try to update it the night before.

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Pomodoro, Pomodoro, Pomodoro.

This is by far the best productivity tool I have personally found. It is something I and many others will continue to return to from time to time when we need to focus.

Classically procrastination is caused by this ticking clock we all have for projects with a due date. This bad tasks I have to do is further away, so I try to push it away as long as possible. And as the time moves forward, the procrastination increases until there is no way I could possibly avoid it longer.

Mental restructuring is required here. Don’t think of the deadline (or the notifications piling up on your phone). Then simply start the work and work undistracted on it until we are no longer productive.

The pomodoro technique is named after the tomato-shaped timers that are frequently used in households around the world. It simply allows you to set some timer (most common 20–25 minutes) and get to work. Without allowing distractions or interruptions, this time is supposed to be super productive and then when it's over you get a 5–10-minute break before you start it again.

Repeat again and again for success.

Minimize bad habits, strengthen good habits

Let’s face it, modern life comes with a lot of distractions. Ask yourself this question: How long after you wake up until you check your phone for the first time? If you said longer than 15 minutes, congratulations- you are among only 38% of Americans.

The goal here is to make it more difficult for your negative habits to sustain and more satisfying and simple to do the good, beneficial ones. This means making yourself jump through hoops to be able to do the bad things, and rewarding yourself when you are doing the ‘right’ activities.

This also means …

Keep your distractions away from you

When you are working, leave your phone, book, tv, messy folder in another room. Close all tabs unrelated to your task, sign out of social media. When it’s working time, let it be just working time.

Don’t multitask

This is the common trap of the millennial or Gen-Z's. Don’t think that our brains are able to handle music and writing, or podcasts and coding, or texting and talking. It doesn’t work, and may even damage your brain or make you stupider… total bummer.

Turn off notifications

While we are at, phones, in general, are huge distractions- make them work better for you. This means turning off notifications, and adjusting when they can distract you. Of course the same goes for your computer as well — turn off its notifications if you need to get work done. Teams, WhatsApp, Slack, Email — change the settings to “No disturb” and use it every time you need to focus.

Stay healthy / eat healthily

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Habits build on habits. There is a potential of exponential growth to be gained from staying positive and focused in multiple areas of your life. Over time you will see a lot of increased potential in productivity in every area of your life.

Eating healthy and staying fit while doing home office will impact your work productivity, but importantly it will also impact your mental health and wellbeing. We all want to eat potato chips and watch Netflix, but let’s collectively try to limit it to just once a week maybe.

Practice mindfulness

One trick to not getting distracted is to be aware of your distractions and how they impact you. For many (myself included) mindfulness or meditation is one of the most effective ways of doing this.

Without going in-depth, there are many strategies for doing this- from the classic vipassana meditation (which has grown very popular in the west in recent years) to the mantra, to metta, to body-scan, to simple breathing techniques.

Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

Whatever your interest or goal is, you can find something that will help, broadly across multiple avenues of life- be it focus, stress, addiction, or improving your relationships.

There is a wealth of opportunities at your fingertips and many companies offering introduction for beginners and returning users alike with the goal of bettering yourself in various ways. I recommend googling and trying a few free resources to see what works for you. I can not overstate enough that a regular meditation practice will be a huge benefit for your life.

Wrap up and final tips

Let’s take one moment to summarize

Make a to-do list

Use the pomodoro technique to focus

Minimize bad habit, strengthen good ones

Stay healthy

Practice mindfulness

None of these things is rocket science necessarily but combined they can not only improve your productivity, but they can also improve your life. I speak from personal experience, they have improved mine. I’m not saying I am following all of these all the time but I have found huge improvements in my life by following these ideas.

A real important point I want to stress out as well is that when you are away from the office you will likely lose that social aspect that is so important for mental wellbeing. Humans are innately social creatures and we need human-human interaction to stay functioning at a high level. Make sure to spend some time listening to personal needs and finding ways to keep yourself happy- maybe an online workout class, maybe a socially distanced meet up, or just reading instead of spending 16 hours a day in front of a screen. Integrating some productivity and wellbeing practices in your life can take you a long way. Make sure to also take some time for resting and relaxation.

In the end, the tips for home office productivity are not so different from regular productivity. I think the most important thing for me in the home office is to treat it like a real office. Keep close to your regular schedule, chat with colleagues (or a dog), get dressed in your real clothes, and pretend like your boss is watching your computer screen. You can use some extra time for lunch or laundry but make sure you don’t get too distracted doing something else or pretty soon home office will just become home.. and then home could become very stressful if you aren’t careful.