Everyone walks their own path on their wellness journey, and even taking one step in that direction is a victory. Every road has a beginning, and as you set out on (or continue!) your wellness journey, it is important to figure out how to allocate your time and focus so you are getting all you can out of the day. Working from home, it is hard to find the focus to evade distraction and be productive during the workday in order to keep your work-life balance. There are loads of work-from-home jobs, and it is challenging to get used to working full-time in the same space where you relax and live.
My goal is to help create a world where people are invested in their own personal health and wellness journey, and with my background in medicine and fitness, I’ve thought a lot about how I can help promote health and wellness with my products. I believe it is important to find a good foundation of nutrients to help you stay healthy and able to provide the right care for your body and mind.
There are a lot of challenges to keeping your focus when working from home, and falling into the trap of distractions can lead to terrible consequences down the line. In this article, I will be discussing some of my favorite strategies about how to focus when working from home, including:
- How to build organization into your day-to-day
- How to create and maintain focus when working from home
- How to create a workspace to maximize productivity
Take Your Organization to the Next Level
No matter what you do at work, it’s still work, and your mind will push and pull to try to distract you and get you to do, well, just about anything else. When you’re at a workplace, there are a variety of built-in ways to keep you on track that you don’t have when you’re working from home. Whether you are clocking in and clocking out or are working with deadlines, keeping focused and staying productive during the workday is very important.
Create Calendars and To-Do Lists
As with many items on this list, there are a variety of ways to approach this part of your day’s organization, and you’ll want to find the one that best reflects your working style. The two ways that we’ll cover, calendars and to-do lists, are great ways to add some structure to your day that helps keep you focused. All of your distractions are so close at hand when you’re home, from the comfortable couch and tv to household chores and much, much more.
Calendar
Creating a calendar helps block out the day into how you’re going to spend your time. This is perfect for meetings, calls, and other time-dependent items throughout the day. You never want to get the notification that you’re five minutes late for a meeting and everyone’s waiting for you. If you want to block off all of your day, then you can add periods of “work time” onto your calendar and have specific projects or tasks that you work on during that time. For example, you could have a 15-minute block in the morning where you go through your emails or a two-hour block in the day where you work on a project, then another block where you work on something else.
To-Do Lists
To-do lists are another great way to organize your day with a little less structure than a calendar. While calendars are always great for meetings, especially with online calendars giving you a notification a few minutes beforehand, a to-do list gives you everything you need to do during the work day. You can take a few minutes at the beginning of the day and list all of your tasks in terms of priority, and then work your way through them during the work day.
Take Breaks Throughout the Day
Breaks are absolutely essential to your workday. The longer you work without break, the harder it becomes to focus, and the likelier it becomes that you are working but only half-focused on what you’re doing. To stay in top shape, your brain needs time to recover throughout the day. There are a lot of timers that outline work times and break times, one of which is the Pomodoro timer.
A timer is only as good as your ability to follow it. Working through breaks is a surefire way to burn out later in the day, and taking extra breaks will cut down on your time being productive or force you to work longer into the evening. When you are working, experiment with a timer that works for you and stick to it!
Don’t Forget About Nutrition!
At home, it is tempting to snack throughout the day. They are right there on hand, right? Snacking during the day, while nice at the moment, can be a distraction in and of itself, and can negatively impact your health and energy as well. Taking the time to cook or order a nutritious meal at mealtimes and keeping a healthy diet are essential to having the focus to allocate throughout the workday.
Another great way to get that boost you need is through supplements. It can be challenging to find the time to cook meals that give your body all the vitamins and minerals that it needs to keep moving at full speed, and adding a supplement can fulfill that last bit that your body needs. You can check out Dr. Emil Nutrition’s Lions Mane Mushroom Capsules to get a little boost in your ability to focus throughout the day, alongside other excellent benefits!
Creating and Maintaining Focus When Working From Home
With so much happening online, it’s already getting harder to work at work and relax at home. E-mails and other notifications have a habit of intruding into our phones at all hours of the evening and, even if we don’t have an action item, it keeps work on our minds when we want it gone. Working from home further complicates that, and it can easily bleed into time that you should be resting and relaxing. Working at odd hours of the day for only a few minutes can make it much harder to focus during the work day when working from home as our brains are struggling to keep from burning out.
Focus on One Task at a Time
During meetings, it is tempting to occupy your time with something else while people speak. This can be work-related or not, but it is almost never good. If you have a part to play in the meeting, getting distracted and not paying attention to what’s being spoken has some serious consequences. This “multitasking” can seep into your routine and is almost always detrimental to your focus. Things, like watching tv, going on your phone, or even just putting on a podcast, can take your mind away from the task at hand and scythe through your productivity.
Looking at the clock and realizing you’ve only completed one hour of work whilst working for two hours is crushing, and one of the major culprits is half-focusing on your work.
Set Work-Life Boundaries
This is especially important for deadline-based work. It is easy to procrastinate and push work off until later, but when that later is after dinner and it’s the last thing you want to do — there’s a problem. This often goes hand-in-hand with half-focusing, where you work on and off throughout the day and then realize that you’re only 70% through your to-do list. Talking about burnout, this can crush your work-life balance if you aren’t careful.
It is important to create a healthy environment for your work that leaves enough time for your life, too. Especially when working from home, you can get lonely and stir-crazy from sitting in front of a computer all day with none of the classic water-cooler chats or even just seeing people you recognize as they walk by your cubicle.
Staying focused when working from home lets you get done all you need to in the time you’ve allocated for it to ensure that you don’t have to sit down on a Sunday evening and slog through an hour or two of work. When you’ve made it through your day, I recommend shutting off completely, if you can. Close all your work-related tabs and emails and transition into however you wish your eventing to go.
Exercise
In order to keep up your energy, finding time to exercise is key when working from home. Working at an office, it is common for people to walk over a mile each day with their general travels to and from work, even if they drive and take the elevators. Even if you only have a few minutes, standing and stretching, walking to the end of the block and back, or doing a few push-ups can go a long way.
Even if I only exercise for 10 minutes I have an easier time focusing throughout the rest of the day.
Find Time for Social Engagements
As I mentioned earlier, working from home can be really challenging socially. When you can, try to schedule social engagements with friends either virtually or in person. Seeing friendly faces and socializing is crucial over the long-term timeframe of working from home. Working from home also lets you work from cafes, restaurants, and outside when the weather cooperates. These changes of scenery and seeing people socializing around you can also recharge your social batteries and help keep up your spirits when working from home.
Create a Workspace
Studies show that working from your bed makes it harder to stay on task and harder to sleep at night. The same is true, in part, for everywhere in the house. If you work on the couch, for instance, it may become harder to enjoy your favorite tv-show later on. On the flip side, working from the couch makes it harder to stay focused, since it’s a place you primarily use to relax. Even if it’s only a tiny desk, carving out space to work lets you create a little separation between your workspace and your living space, helping you stay focused when working from home.
Where do You Work the Best?
When you work from home you have the choice of where exactly your workspace will be. Oftentimes this is somewhere in your house, but it can extend to local cafes or even bars if you are in the mood! This power comes with a responsibility, however, because there are places where your work and your productivity will suffer.
Minimize Distractions
This plays a major part in being able to focus when working from home. Distractions abound, and losing chunks of time to social media, YouTube, or other household activities is all too easy. When you create your workspace, do all you can to distance yourself from potential distractions. Find ways to increase the number of steps it takes to open up that pesky social media app to give yourself time to put your phone back down and get to work.
What’s Your Plan for Focusing From Home?
How have you fared so far with working from home? While it is important to create a routine and an environment that makes it easier to focus when you’re working from home, there are a lot of pros to the situation as well!
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