5 hacks to improve productivity at home office

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One of the biggest challenges of working on your own is Productivity, especially when working from home.

Your home is your comfort place where you relax after a tough day. So, getting all charged up and motivated gets difficult sometimes.

When I started on my own, that was one of the biggest challenges I faced, how to be productive at home office.

After a lot of experimentation and trial, I have figured few practices and tools which help me stay productive.

Here I am sharing my list, hope you find it useful:

Practice Deep Work

In a world full of distractions, we are rarely invested in the task we are supposed to. As a result, we take more time to complete it and often aren’t fully satisfied with it either.

To create that state where we need to give our absolute best, we need to practice deep work.

According to the principle of deep work, to produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.

One important point to note is that whole of your workday cannot be about deep work. The deep work should be for skills or tasks which are most important to your business.

In your work schedule set aside 2-3 hours for deep work and during those hours ensure that your focus is on the task at hand and nothing else. Pause your inbox, mute the notifications, don’t answer calls.

With time you will notice, a positive impact on your productivity.

Dedicated Work Area

A rookie mistake when working from home is to not have a dedicated space for work. If you think you can achieve great things without having a proper place to sit, you are mistaken.

A dedicated work area offers privacy which helps in reducing distractions and improve focus. We don’t need research to prove that when we are in a flow we like to keep distractions at bay.

Another important factor to remember is to set up an ergonomic workstation. This way you can avoid unnecessary injuries and risks to your health.

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Use Productivity Apps

In the real world, a fast growing tree grows in 10-15 years, however, in Forest, it will depend on how well you focus on your work and don’t waste time on unnecessary apps.

The way it works is like this - you plant a seed in Forest.

The seed gradually grows into a tree only if you don't leave this app to check text messages or other notifications.If you do, the tree withers away.

Therefore, you become obligated to stay in your zone and not harm the nature (at least virtually!).

To make it more exciting you can share your forest updates with your friends and inspire them to increase their green cover too!

You can also create a whitelist of apps. Leaving Forest and using apps in whitelist won’t kill your tree.

Organize your Work Day

Is this one the most obvious one isn’t it? Organize your work schedule, follow it religiously and track progress.

The biggest challenge for me while following this step was how do I monitor if I am getting any good? If my work schedule is productive enough?

When I got into the app world it got more complex, there were calendar apps, to-do apps etc. That is when I turned to a simpler solution - Google sheets.

Now, they are an inseparable part of my work routine.

I use it to create my to-do lists, track the progress of various projects, manage my work schedule and expenses.

I can access the latest version of these documents from any device. The depth of functionality suits my needs perfectly.

Whenever I come across a new app, I ask myself, can I accomplish this using Google Sheet? If yes, then I don’t waste my time on a new tool at all.

Keep It Simple

Is this one another sitter? Isn’t it?

Actually, No!

There was a time when productivity was becoming elusive for me every day.

The more I tried to become efficient, more I lost grip on tasks and activities.

That is when I realised, the problem was of plenty. I was reading too many blogs, following too many podcasts, practicing too many techniques.

As a result, instead of being super productive, I lost my time shuttling between apps and tracking results of methodologies I was following, rather than the actual work.

That is when I trimmed the fat and started focusing on selective content. So, far it has worked out well for me.

I have also made a resolution to revisit the above list once in six months only if I feel that it is hampering my productivity in some way.

Otherwise, I think I have enough to get me going and get more productive and keep working on what matters the most.