How To Fight Distractions Working From Home

Working from home can be very difficult due to the lack of structure, the need for self-accountability and the constant distractions that exist. While not needing to work may seem nice, you also have to make sure you remain productive when you do work from home.

Working from home is an increasingly popular choice for tech professionals and business owners. With an increasing amount of cloud technologies, collaboration platforms and advanced devices, more people are able to work from wherever they want. Additionally, some office cultures are shifting to be more accommodating of remote workers.

While some workplaces are allowing for increasing remote work, actually being productive working from home can be challenging for some professionals. Distractions like household chores, kids and easy access to a TV can prevent at-home workers from accomplishing as much as they want or need to.

Here are ways on how to fight distractions working from home:

1. Make an Agenda & Meet it

One of the hardest parts of working from home is your ability to get everything on your agenda done. Pushing items back due to your lack of interest in accomplishing them can be very dangerous because you don’t have someone telling you what to do. Part of a successful routine working from home is to ensure that you respect an area of your house as an actual working space.

A great strategy is to write all pre-planned items in one color on your calendar and then all new upcoming tasks during the day items in another. This color coordination allows you to see which tasks you start with for the day and which ones must be done. Using an old school paper calendar can also be helpful so that your eyes can look away from the computer for a few minutes per day.

2. Get Dressed

Maintain a schedule similar to what you would follow if you worked in an office, including getting out of bed and putting on clothes other than pajamas. Follow this by having set hours, including a designated lunch break. By getting dressed, it puts you in a working mindset which may in turn help you fight distractions.

3. Block or Hide Distracting Web Sites And Apps

Parental controls aren’t just for naughty kids, they’re also pretty handy for distracted adults too. Having trouble staying off Facebook while you’re working? Remove the bookmark from your browser or even uninstall it from your phone. You can even create a separate browser profile for work or use an browser extension to block the sites that distract you.

4. Give Yourself Permission To Relax From Time-To-Time

It’s okay to allow yourself to get distracted once in a while. As long it’s not a regular occurrence, you don’t have to worry too much about it. However, if your relaxation time overtakes your work time, then you need to reconsider your priorities. It is healthy to have a few moments where you do relax at home.

5. Create A Set Office

Professionals will tell you to not work from your couch or your bedroom. Instead, designate a home office, preferably something with a door to separate yourself from outside distractions. Only use the home office space when you’re working to help give yourself a feeling of being at the office. Additionally, set up the office with similar equipment that you would have at an actual office. For example, if you use two monitors at work, have two monitors in your home office.

6. Set Specific “Business” Hours

This is particularly important if you have young children. It can be very difficult for children to understand that they can’t disturb you while you work. If you have an office, close your door and place a do not disturb sign on it. This is particularly important if you are making client calls because it prevents family members from inadvertently barging in on you during a critical call.

7. Focus On 2-3 Important Tasks 

If you have 20 tasks that need to be done every day, how effective do you think your focus ability will be? Terrible, right? You can’t expect to do those things with sophistication if you’re too scatterbrained to focus. You need to break it down to the essentials.

Focus on only doing 2-3 important tasks a day (even one is okay), but no more than that. It’s all you need to take steps towards accomplishing your goals. Slower is much better than giving up early because you took on too much.

8. Control Your Internal Distractions 

Internal distractions are some of the problems that you can’t really run away from. You need to find ways to prepare your mind for work and find simple ways to keep it from straying to non-essential thoughts as well. When you find your mind wandering, find a way to stay focused on what is important.

Conclusion

A distraction at the wrong time can really derail your productivity for the day. Especially when we work from home, we can often take advantage of this luxury and thus our productivity declines heavily. In this post, I shared with you the ways on how to fight distractions working from home.