Remote work has many benefits for both employers and employees, but it also has some challenges. Being able to stay productive while working remotely can at times be a challenge. Here we have our list of tips for ensuring you are able to keep healthy, focused and productive.
Create a Dedicated Workspace
- Consider Natural Light: Take advantage of natural light from windows or skylights to create an ideal ambience while working from home.
- Add Home Decor Elements: Brighten up the workspace with plants, artwork, fun textures, or other decorative elements you like that make your workspace more inviting and less mundane.
- Create a Dedicated Workspace: Set up an ergonomic desk and chair in a quiet space that helps keep you productive and comfortable throughout the day.
- Choose a Room: Find a room in your house where you can set up the optimal workspace, and make sure that you can easily access all necessary items without distractions. Even if you cannot have a dedicated room, a comfortable setup in another room will help you immensely.
- Invest in Suitable Furniture: Get a comfortable chair and desk that are adjustable for an ergonomic posture and other office furniture to ensure productivity and comfort.
- Create Separate Spaces for Work & Leisure: Designate different parts of your room for work and leisure by setting up a section for taking breaks.
- Invest in Quality Equipment: Invest in tech equipment such as laptops, monitors, printers/scanners, and headsets that you need to stay connected with colleagues during remote work hours.
- Minimize Clutter & Keep Organized: Declutter your desk area and organize documents into neat folders or cabinets to keep clutter at bay and increase efficiency while working from home. It is amazing the impact that clutter can have on our focus.
- Utilize Exterior Walls: Consider mounting shelves onto exterior walls for extra storage space so materials don’t interrupt the flow of your workday.
- Reduce Background Noise: Use noise-cancelling headphones or invest in soundproofing material when possible if there is too much external noise coming through the walls or floors of your home.
- Make it Your Space: Personalize the space by placing items that make you feel happy and put inspiring reminders on the walls/desks to help energize you throughout the day!
Develop a Schedule for Working Remotely
- Set Realistic Deadlines: Don’t overwhelm yourself with an unreasonably tight timeline – set achievable goals and deadlines which give you enough time to complete the work without compromising quality output.
- Check-in With Team Members: Talk to your colleagues or supervisors about their expectations for each task and make sure to factor in conversations and check-ins throughout the day so that everyone is on the same page. Often with remote work you need to schedule the conversations and check-ins, so keep this in mind when agreeing to deadlines.
- Break It Up: To avoid getting overwhelmed, break down larger tasks into smaller components so it’s easier to manage and complete within a certain timeframe.
- Schedule Rest Breaks: No one can sustain productivity 100% of the time, so make sure to plan regular breaks throughout your workday in order to recharge your energy stores before tackling more tasks.
- Clean Up At The End Of The Day: Taking a few minutes at the end of every workday to tidy up any messes from projects and clear out your workspace can help prevent distractions during future work sessions.
- Allow Flexibility In Your Schedule: Give yourself some breathing room when needed by allowing extra buffer time for unexpected issues that come up which could throw off plans for completing certain objectives quickly.
- Set Time For Self-Care: Keep yourself healthy with regular exercise, eating habits, etc., along with taking periodic mental health days where you can just relax and reset!
Take Advantage Of Tools
Utilize project management tools such as ClickUp, Monday.com, Asana or Trello to help to organize tasks and deadlines, and also ensure visibility across all team members working remotely. This helps in a few ways:
- Keep Track of Deadlines & Milestones: Stay organized by keeping track of important dates related to projects so that you can be more prepared to deliver within the timeframe expectations. It is usually better to understand your progress towards a milestone than to surprise everyone on the day.
- Avoid Multitasking: Juggling too many tasks at once will only lead to inefficient results while focusing on one task until completion provides better outputs overall. This need to focus is well-known, and an important part of Kanban.
Want to learn more about these tools?
Take Regular Breaks
Make sure to step away from your desk every now and then to clear your mind and give yourself some perspective on the task at hand. If you get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour, your body and your mind will get a small refresh that will help you be more productive, and if you can get out into the sunshine during your lunch time (for example), you will gain many benefits.
Communicate With Your Colleagues and Team
Make sure to stay connected with your colleagues through regular video calls or voice chats so that everyone is up-to-date on project progress.
Minimize Distractions
Turn off notifications from social media apps, emails, phone calls, etc., to prevent any unnecessary interruptions during work hours.
Utilize Time Tracking Apps
You might find it useful to monitor the amount of time you spent working on tasks, using tools such as Toggl or Clockify. Time tracking is often integrated into task management apps. They can give you better productivity tracking and provides insights into how you spend your time each day.
Here are some of my best practices for utilizing time or task-tracking apps:
- Know Your Time Spent: Utilizing time-tracking apps can provide insights into how much time you spend on each task, allowing you to optimize your workflow and increase productivity.
- Improve Work-Life Balance: Track activities like breaks, meetings, work sessions and leisure activities to better understand the balance between work and life so that neither one takes over the other too much.
- Get Rid of Distractions: Use time-tracking apps to identify distractions that may be preventing you from reaching peak performance levels, and take steps to remove them so that more time can be devoted to productive tasks.
- Prioritize Tasks: By looking at data from a time-tracking app, it is easier to prioritize tasks based on how long they take or where most of your attention is being spent throughout the workday.
- Create To-Do Lists & Goals: Set specific goals for yourself for each day by creating ‘to-do’ lists within the app’s dashboard in order to stay organized and motivated throughout your remote working hours.
- Track Progress Towards Goals: Measure progress made towards achieving certain objectives with data available from the app, helping refine strategies and make adjustments in order to advance more effectively.
- Minimize Human Error: Since many of us are required to log our time, automating time tracking using a time tracking app can help to reduce errors caused by manual logging or inaccurate estimates, leading to better accuracy when recording timesheet information.
Reward Yourself
I’m leaving the best for last! Celebrate small wins along the way by rewarding yourself for getting things done! The dopamine hit of completing something is a small reward, but every one of us should really take the time to reward ourselves for the work we do!
