Unlock the secrets of high productivity while working from home. Discover the five habits that set apart the most efficient remote workers, and learn how to incorporate these practices into your own routine to maximize your work-from-home potential.
Effectively working from home involves these five habits:
Loneliness, isolation, distractions, and Zoom fatigue are real challenges to overcome
- Many of the work challenges are not location specific
- Efficiency is portable
- Teams that had honed skills at simple, clear communication and logical workflow have brought those skills and filters home with them
- The most critical challenge is the sense work never ends
Add whitespace
When you feel like you’re drowning in calls, when you tingle from adrenaline, or when your body is craving sugar or email or caffeine or any of the compensatory techniques for rest, take a break.
- Funt calls this “inserting a wedge of whitespace,” or taking a strategic pause.
Keep email to intervals
Check at the top of every hour, for instance.
Set the Stage
Establish the same environment, such as a pad of paper, photo, or inspirational quote, in each location every day
- Repeating the set up tells your brain that work is “on,” and the visual cue of returning to the same orchestrated workspace over and over will give you a sense of power
Create a clocking-out ritual
End your day visually by opening a literal compartment, such as a drawer or a cabinet, and placing all of your work-related items inside.
- Announce that you are finished working for the day and thank those who helped you get there.
Get Rid of Low-Value Activities
Address what Funt calls the “garbage work” that fills our day
- Have a reductive mindset
- A habit-a reflex, tendency, effortless first inclination-to eliminate or cut the unnecessary
- We must dismantle the additive instincts most companies and professionals have developed
