Working from home isn’t necessarily for everyone. While some people thrive in the flexibility and independence working from home can offer, others crave greater human interaction and may struggle to stay focused amid all the potential home distractions. In this post, we provide some strategies for avoiding those distractions.
Eliminate Obvious Distractions
It can be tempting to kick back a bit when working from home because superiors aren’t looking over your shoulder. But it’s essential to eliminate the urge to surf the Internet, play around on social media, or watch TV. These are some obvious distractions that can greatly sap productivity and that should be avoided altogether outside of legitimate break times.
Break Up the Work
There are a variety of techniques for dividing up the day’s tasks, but most have several elements in common. These include breaking work into discrete sections throughout the day, prioritizing certain tasks, and remembering to take regular breaks.
Use a To-Do Calendar
A daily and weekly calendar can be a great tool for keeping track of necessary tasks and scheduling work throughout the day and over the course of the workweek. This can also be a great way to schedule regular breaks.
Managing Child Care
The current impetus for many to work from home is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also led to school closures. For those with school-aged children, having those children at home adds another challenge in terms of staying focused and avoiding distractions.
Depending on age and maturity, these children may need more or less supervision. The key is to have a plan in place to effectively manage childcare responsibilities while setting boundaries to ensure these responsibilities have minimal impact on productivity.
Whether or not it’s the ideal working situation, unprecedented numbers of Americans are working from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether the necessity to work remotely lasts a couple more weeks or several more months, many companies may discover the arrangement works well and decide to continue their work-from-home policies indefinitely.
To make this a positive outcome for both employers and employees, it’s crucial that remote employees learn to work effectively and without distraction.