7 Tips to Be Productive & Enjoy Working from Home

In India, Second half of March 2020 introduced Work-From-Home to most office goers. With Pandemic induced lockdown most of us misses those office noises, chitchat with colleagues, and Tea Breaks. Still, we must adjust with new reality. According to an India times report, 57% of Indians feel very overworked while working from home. Several Other surveys indicated towards the fact that Working from home environment can be excessively daunting for working population worldwide, but there are few ways by which we can reduce our fatigue and even feel Happy while working from home. Let us checkout below “7 tips to be productive & enjoy working from home”.

1-Create & Maintain Sperate Workspace: If you live in a big metro city and having a separate room for your “work from office” schedule then you are not alone, most Indians have the same complaint. But solution can be as easy as to set-up a Table/ space where you can work without external disturbances. Obviously, you need to speak to your family and explain them why you need this space and undisturbed time, but once you do this it will be a great relaxer for your mind and work.

2-Divide Your Time: The reason most people feel fatigued and overworked because they are not able to enjoy family time and found themselves slogging at odd hours. You are not required to do that, your employers expect you to work at home during office hours, apart from few critical situations we spent office-time in some home chorus or binge watching some series and later complete our work at Unofficial Hours. This harms you in two fronts 1) while working at unofficial hours we feel exhausted and overworked & 2) while enjoying that binge watch we continue to think rather worry about our pending work. Solution is quite simple, Act as if you are working from office, start your day at office time and end the day at office time. This simple trick will help your mind to complete your work within That period and help you maintain a work life balance.
3-Dress Up as if you are going to office: Remember pre lockdown days, we use to prepare to go to office and now most of us spend our day in loungewear, pyjamas & tees. If you start dressing up before office time and then work in those cloths for rest of office hours, then you will realize that your dressing is also part your mood for work. Dressing up gives mind stimulus about working.

4-Schedule is Helpful: Create a schedule which suits you. Yes, you read it right, a schedule which you wish to follow is not good enough to motivate you to follow schedule, Schedule must be a balance between your personality traits and professional commitments, not a forceful promise which you anyway going to break. For example: if someone who is not a morning person, if creates a schedule which demand him/her to wake up @ morning 4AM, Can this be easily followed, Case is stronger for failure than success, but if same person plan to wake up at 9AM and then start working at 10AM than chances greatly improves for success because this schedule dose not force the person to push his boundaries but support him as per his personalities.

5-Take Brakes. Seriously: Breaks refresh you up and increase your energy levels if you use them correctly, but we can observe two kinds of behaviours while taking breaks especially in “Work from Home” Environment. A) People Stretch their breaks, for example someone might have decided to take 15min. break every 2hour but they are flexible about the break timing, thus from 15 min. breaks become a 40 min fun-Time and the worst part is that nothing productive comes out of these stretched breaks

B) People Do not enjoy the break but try to finish something else in that break which ultimately make them tired again and then they lose precious “work momentum”.

Both bad habits leave you with a frustrated mind, because either way you are running behind schedule.

Trick is to take the breaks seriously and get back to work as per your schedule. Keeping up with schedule gives you a sense of accomplishment and relief which is inspires you to complete things on time.

6- Go Out Often– An evening stroll with family/friends, or a morning walk or a simple outing for groceries is good for you. Stay protected use behaviour as required during this turbulent time. Fresh air and seeing other people and nature will help your mind and body.

7- Learn New Things: – if you follow above advises then you might find some free time during your day, and you should learn about new industry trends. New learning opportunities can be found everywhere it can be that MBA program which you wanted to pursue since long but couldn’t be done due to lack of time, register in a good Executive MBA class, or learn a new programming language etc. New Learning will give your personality a new paradigm and improvements comes naturally.