Many of us find ourselves working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not always easy, but working from home can actually help you develop your skills and further your career. Here are our top ten productivity tips when working from home. Be prepared for everything to change!
- Catnap – a quick forty winks leaves you feeling energised and ready to re-focus on your day’s tasks. Anything over two hours is not recommended and always remember to tell your colleagues you’re on a client call.
- Snack – Start the day by hiding all of your favourite snacks in random locations around your house or apartment. This means that every time you feel the need for a snack – on average 4 minutes and 27 seconds according to a recent survey – you have to engage your memory. Memory skills are essential to getting ahead in business – everything from knowing the name of a client’s dog to remembering what you actually get paid to do. And nothing beats the feeling of finding a chocolate hobnob in an old pair of trainers, especially when you know that your memory muscle has just had a serious workout.
- Laundry – Problem-solving is a very desirable skill for professionals across all sectors. Your problem is that every single room in your house has festering piles of unwashed clothing in it. Seize the opportunity to solve the problem of your own slovenliness by putting them in the washing machine and staring at a rapid 1000 spin cycle for the next forty-six minutes.
- Watch Daytime TV – By watching daytime television you realise how essential it is to always be in gainful employment.
- Washing up – Agile methodologies are crucial to modern working practice. Experiment with different washing-up techniques – maybe do the cutlery first, try leaving the glasses to the end or even stack cups on top of cups to drain. You can also test your ability to pivot mid-way through a task by smashing your partner’s favourite mug.
- Look out the window – Understanding human behaviour and being able to empathise with a wide range of people and situations is vital to forming connections and healthy networks in business. The best way is through long term observation. [Note – This also works for birds if your home office faces your garden.] Extend this even further by visiting a local convenience store and engaging in participant observation, ideally around the purchase of chocolate or beer.
- Drink alcohol – Alcohol is a drug and a stimulant. It is also legal. Stimulants are great for getting work done to deadline and impressing your colleagues with your quick wit. Alcohol is also a depressant so will definitely stop things from ever getting too silly.
- Doodle – Nothing releases productivity like engaging another hemisphere of your brain. Drawing anything you like on any surface at all will light up the right side of your brain like a Christmas tree. Your left side will take note and before you know it you’ll be doubling-down and producing the best reports of your life.
- Re-organise your book collection – Self-organisation and self-motivation are vital to many roles. It’s also good to demonstrate that you are highly adaptable. Set yourself challenges by reordering the books on your shelves by size, colour, theme or perceived attractiveness of their authors in a strict time limit.
- Browse online shops – By endlessly surfing e-commerce websites, clicking on Instagram ads and scrolling through Pinterest for hours, you will find yourself realising what more money could do for you. And yes, it will ultimately buy you happiness. By seeing what you could afford with that next bonus or salary bump, you will find new levels of motivation and work at near 100% productivity for the remaining ten minutes of the day.
Header image by Carl Heyerdahl via Unsplash
