5 tips on how to craft your remote working day
Working from home is still a relatively new idea that started getting popular when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world two years ago. Many people went online with their jobs and even if the benefits of working from your bedroom or home office seemed clear, there were also hardships of staying focused at home and being productive. People realized that working remotely is not as easy as it looks and requires preparation. Even after 2 years of living in the pandemic, finally having the chance to fully get back to normal life, remote work will not disappear and will remain relevant. People have already felt what it is like to have flexibility in their lives and easier to combine personal responsibilities such as hobbies and family with work. This article will introduce 5 simple, easily understandable tips on how to create the perfect remote working day so you can be the most productive and happy.
Starting the day early
This is simple but hard advice. Most of you imagine the perfect morning as waking up very early, meditating, writing a journal, eating a well-balanced breakfast and then drinking coffee, catching up with all the news. However, in reality while working remotely you wake up and straight away take your phone since you become used to checking your phone constantly, catching up with colleagues from other countries or places and then looking at your computer screen. This way your priorities are forgotten and you can then notice how your day is a complete mess and you do not know how to fix it.
The best approach to establish a good start to the day is to plan the whole morning the night before and strictly stick to the plan. Tasks that are not urgent can be scheduled for different times later in the day. If everything seems tight and you cannot finish tasks on time, you could wake up earlier in the morning to be more proactive. In the end, it is important to smoothly start your mornings and when feeling stressed take a 5 minute break from your work.
Decide where you will be working
You may imagine a perfect day working remotely in a coffee shop or a coworking office, sipping coffee and having a relaxing background with some classic music playing. If not in a coffee shop, there are always expectations of a home office which is picture perfect. However, working in coffee shops has many downsides such as the amount of people and sounds, coworking places are expensive and working from home has distractions since there are other people in the house and sometimes you do not even want to get out of bed in the first place.
Realistically, you should first invest in your home office if that is where you will be working. Buy a desk and create an office space that will make you feel inspired. If you feel like you want a coworking place, try to find places that charge less for the membership or ask your company to cover it for you stating the reason that you are more productive working remotely like that. In addition, to find calm places to work in the city, you could join forums or Facebook groups for remote works and ask people there. The most important thing is to keep trying new ways to work so that in the end you find the most appropriate way for you.
Prioritizing tasks
It is important to plan out your tasks and maximize productivity at the highest level. It seems that you can just come up with the list of priorities to make everything easier. However, the to-do list can become stressful and watery, by thinking that a lot of things are important it can become never ending and only make your productivity worse. That’s why you should experiment with productivity techniques that are accessible online. They are not the secret to success and cannot give a fast fix to every problem but they may give ideas on how to construct your daily tasks and some “hacks” may seem closer to the heart. If it is still hard to pick out tasks of highest priority then it would be useful to decide which tasks are not a priority. This will save time and it will be more comfortable selecting the important things.
Clear your head from technologies through deep work
From the outside it may seem that working at home frees you from all the interruptions that happen in offices. The photos and videos online show you that it is a dream and your productivity rises to the highest level. However, what people forget is that being at home all the time means a lot of distractions from technological devices such as smartphones, buzzing with social media notifications, text messages and phone calls. Learning how to control your digital activities is essential to a productive day. Luckily, the devices that we use can give you the tools to do it. There are many apps that can block specific sites or apps for a specific amount of time which can help you focus. Working with interruptions will weaken your mental strength and productivity levels eventually will plummet. You may also follow the basic principles of digital minimalism, reducing your technology use during the day, which will give you the habit to not check social media continually and pick up your phone every few minutes. Everyone needs digital detox which gains a lot more significance when talking about remote work.
Maintain a healthy work-life balance
The internet shows a specific perspective of remote work where you work as much as you want, have time to relax on the beach, do yoga and read many books. It may seem that remote work will give you a lot of free time to do the things you want such as spending more time with family, engaging in your hobbies. The dedicated and hard working person in you does very differently. When you start working remotely, you use every minute for work because you believe that this way you will gain a headstart and do more, you have push notifications flowing throughout the day which keeps reminding you to work and you just hope that somehow everything will naturally fall into place and suddenly your work-life balance question will be solved.
The only way you will actually have a work-life balance is if you consciously decide on it. You have to put limits on your work and understand that at a specific time in the evening you have to unplug and stop thinking about work related things. You may also one to have one day a week when you have a day off work and do something that brings you pleasure. Remember, it takes a lot of planning and self discipline to put together your day when working by yourself and finding the habits that put you closer to a real work-life balance.