Top Five Productivity Tips for Working from Home
How to stay focused while collaborating remotely with your team
June 24, 2022
As more companies choose to transition to either hybrid or fully remote work, people are settling into the new normal of the permanent home office. While employees embrace the positive effects of this change on their personal life, including hours saved commuting and the opportunity to spend more time with family, it can sometimes be difficult to focus on work. Whether you’re working from home once a month or every day, we’ve assembled some tips that will help you stay productive and collaborate with coworkers remotely.
Schedule Your Time for Transparency
It’s important to utilize digital scheduling tools so that your availability is visible to the rest of your team. When you add meetings onto your calendar and project deadlines onto task cards, it gives others a clear understanding of your workload. Both Outlook and Google Calendars even offer a feature where you can schedule “focus time” into your work day to automatically decline meetings that would negatively impact your productivity.
If you have events outside of work that you’re planning to make time for, put those on your calendar as well! Working from home means you may not have casual conversations with coworkers in the same way you would in an office, so you need to make a conscious effort to tell them about vacation time, family events, or irregular working hours. This preserves the work-life balance you need to focus while you’re on the clock and relax when you’re not.
Create a Dedicated Work Area
Creating a space in your home that is specifically for work can help reduce distractions, improve your posture, and give you the opportunity to immerse yourself in projects or walk away from them as needed. If you’re able to add plants or position your desk near a natural light source, both have been shown to improve mood and increase productivity.
Your digital workspace should be just as organized as your physical location in order to make the most of your time. By choosing a Work OS that has all your essential collaboration functions in one place, you maintain better focus and efficiency throughout the day.
Manage Your Personal Workflow
Plan out your time at the start of the day (or even a week at a time) so that you know how much time to set aside for both projects and breaks. Have a priority system in place so that you know what work needs immediate attention and what work can wait. This allows you to take advantage of the home office by building time into your schedule for exercising, cooking meals, playing with your pet, or any other activity that reinvigorates you during the day.
Using Timeline View (also known as a Gantt Chart) to see your pending tasks is a great way to get an overview of what projects are in progress during a specific timeframe, and can show you at a glance how many projects are contained within custom bucket categories. If you assign a different color tag to each member of your team, it’s easy to see what each person’s workload is and adjust assignments accordingly.
Set the Right Mood for Focus
One of the big benefits of working from home is the control of your space. Whether you prefer listening to music while you work, enjoying an audiobook, or slipping on noise-canceling headphones for silence, you’re able to choose the best soundtrack for your productivity.
Take advantage of team chat channels to ask coworkers for album or book recommendations! It fosters a sense of community and preserves company culture remotely. Try setting up a dedicated channel for productivity tips or suggested tunes so that people have a space they can use to connect with each other.
Communicate to Stay Connected
Speaking of connection, when you don’t physically see your coworkers on a daily basis it’s important to make the time to check in and see how everything is going with them. This includes asking about progress on work projects, but also talking about life events and personal goals.
Checklists that include due dates and assignees for each item are a great way to keep projects on track remotely without micromanaging your team, which helps maintain relationships. You can also schedule regular team-building activities such as casual “break room” chats, virtual games, or trivia contests.
Want to learn more about how a Work OS can benefit your team? Contact us to talk with a work management specialist about your company’s specific needs.
Natalie Litofsky, Copywriting Manager
