Working at Home or by Yourself? Learn to Manage Your Time and Increase Productivity

What’s the formula for productivity when you are working from home? —miles away from the boss. This is the question most of us keep asking every day after realizing that we are achieving less and less as expected or, as we could have been were we to work from the office under the supervision of our superiors. Surprisingly, working from home could have exponential productivity gains. There are fewer interruptions from workmates, no wasting time in the traffic when moving to and from work, and no crossing streets for coffee or lunch.

Procrastination and interruption people you are living with can make be a hindrance to improving productivity when working at homes, but commitment to make changes on “little” things can be the difference between accomplishing a lot each day and piling a lot for the next day, and the day after that and so on and so forth.

If you can learn to add more time to your workday and practice more efficient ways of working, you can accomplish a lot each day. Here are a few tips and principles that you can adapt to improve your productivity and enhance other aspects of your life

Have A To-Do List and Start with The Most Essential Tasks.

Even though you cannot change years of bad working habits in a day, you need to start thinking like a boss! Remember there is no one to keep tabs of how you are spending your precious time. What are more urgent tasks that need your immediate attention and which ones can wait? These are the kind of questions your boss will ask.

They are same questions you need to start asking yourself and to find answers to them as well. The best way to prioritize your work is by starting with the urgent ones and work your way down to the ones that can wait. Start by having a to-do list in the order of priority. Following that list, start with the first one and work your way down the list. This way if more urgent work unexpectedly comes up, you will have already managed the previous urgent ones, and you can once again revisit your list. The list should not be, in any way, influenced by your favorite tasks but rather the importance and urgency of every task. The good thing is, the faster you get done with the least favorite task, the quicker you move on to you’re the tasks you love doing.

Don’t Let Time Wasters Take Over

Going for coffee, attending a meeting or two, and taking your time to call friends provide means for taking breaks. Still, if those breaks take more time than we’re working, well, they turn to be “your energies of progress” and you should spend the least time in them., better yet, do such unproductive tasks when you are exhausted and want to take a break. But playing games, trolling friends in social media, and returning emails won’t pay bills. Remember bosses are nowadays monitoring the amount of time employees spend on the internet, you should do the same. When it’s time to work, it’s time to look for money to pay bills and not to socialize. Do the job as per the list you created, and when you are done enough for the day, you can socialize all you want.

Have A Well-Organized Workplace

Have a workplace with everything that you need to do your job. Things like a stapler that make you waste time in the workplace should be well placed at your desk. No moving up and down asking workmates for this and that. You will have everything you need within your arm’s length.

Efficiency Is the Key

Learn to do similar tasks in bundles. For instance, if it’s shopping for work equipment, make a list of all that you need and take a single trip to buy them. If you have similar tasks to accomplish, work on them one after another. This is effective, especially if the tasks are repetitive, you will have all the information in mind, and the tasks at hand will be more or less a routine. As such, you will be able to complete for a considerable chunk of work in a couple of hours. On the same note, have someone do the non-essential tasks, and if you have to do them by yourself carry them out after work.