• Limit distractions

Working from home comes with many distractions that can be a roadblock when it comes to getting work tasks done. It can be tempting to perform home chores or to entertain family or friends at a time when you planned to work. Avoid situations that put you in a position to go against your better judgment by avoiding or managing distractions when working from home.

• Set rules for your household

Rules help manage the expectations of others who cohabit with you. This is particularly important if you have children. For example, having a rule that you shouldn’t be disturbed between 8 am and 5 pm, a period when you usually have online zoom meetings can help curtail undesirable surprises which can disrupt your focus during a meeting.

• Plan out your tasks, prioritize and focus

A great way to start out your day is to itemize your work-related tasks and prioritize them in the order of what’s most important. Performing your most important tasks first will help manage the pressure that will build up if left until the end of the day. Tasks with the highest impact on your company and/or tasks with the closest deadlines should typically be done first.

• Separate workspaces from family spaces

Having a dedicated workspace at home can help you establish to others that your workspace needs to be respected. Intuitively, others living with you will avoid interrupting you when you are in this environment and they will also avoid tampering with anything in your workspace when you are not there.  Additionally, by creating a workspace within your home, you create a stronger connection to your work when you use the space and this can increase your ability to focus on your daily tasks.

• Give yourself break period.

Working back-to-back can actually hinder your productivity due to mental fatigue or brain drain. Just as you would if you were in your company office, taking a short 15–30 minute break can help resuscitate your energy. When you re-enter your work mode, with a fresh pair of eyes, you might see things you didn’t see earlier.

This is particularly true for people in highly creative tasks, like design work, and people who work with more logically inclined skill sets like programming.

• Use Planning tools that help keep you organized

Planning tools help you keep track of deadlines and daily tasks. There are various desktop and mobile apps that you can use to schedule your daily work-related tasks.

For basic to-do lists, Google Tasks, Microsoft-To-do, or OmniFocus can help you capture and manage tasks by allowing you to set reminders, track task completion, and in some cases, collaborate with others. ClickUp, Trello, Slack, and Monday.com come to mind for project-based planning.

• Automate your tasks or Processes (wherever possible)

Task automation occurs when you or your company use a software solution to reduce manual handling of basic or complex tasks that happen naturally on a daily basis. These tasks are programmed to happen if certain desired conditions are met. An example of this would be to set your mailbox to handle emails received with descriptive parameters such as from “xyz@businessname.com” in an inbox folder called “New business” and forward the email to a third party.

Assuming you have over 1000 emails coming in from 1000 email owners because they fit this description (“xyz@businessname.com”), automating this task saves you the time and energy of performing this task manually every single time.

There are other ways to automate your workflow, Secured Records happens to have one of the best automation enterprise solutions in the industry. Contact us and learn how we can help you work more effectively from any location, including your home.