8 Easy Tips to Stay Focused While Working from Home

The COVID-19 global pandemic and associated lockdowns have placed the Work-from-Home methodology at a pivotal standpoint for IT and eCommerce companies to be able to work out a steady shift, evolving with the new changes and challenges that come with it.

On a practical note, however, to stay focused on the work often turns out to be a challenging task when working from a household. Adapting to the workstation of the couch, bed, or dining table constantly reminds of leisurely activities. Scant communication with people and avoiding to participate in household adventures can take a toll on your productivity. So here are some simple tips to improve your concentration while working at home.

For finding ways to improve work focus and productivity, it is essential to understand the problem areas that you are dealing with – the disturbances that are particularly significant for home-based work environments. Procrastination can be a more significant hurdle than hardware failures. However, it is still a general problem, given the fact that someone that has a procrastinating habit will do so at the office as well. It is not exclusive to WFH. Yet still, in certain situations, even steadfast workers end up procrastinating, as if it is contagious. A few of the ‘causes’ are jotted down below:

• Makeshift workstation - lack of proper desk space and improvising with the discomforts of posture.
• Battery Charging Chronicles - another workstation related disturbance, when your makeshift desk is not proximal to the charging point, and the wires need to be adjusted when your battery is drained.
• Sound - household sounds can be music, but most of the time, it is Heavy Metal. And you have to suck it up.
• Guilt - children and animals have incredible intuition, but they often don’t get the point why their favorite human beings have to stay glued to the computer all the time.
• Household Chores and Visual Clutter - while it is to okay to work in an office, leaving your laundry and dusty corners for a weekend shift, it is hard to concentrate on your work while looking at them, or while your pending household chores look back at you.

Let’s leave the people-oriented disturbances - neighbors, roomies, or even families. The whole world can’t stop operating just because you are working from home!

Let’s start with the perception that you cannot arrange for a new desk in turn of the extending lockdowns, or spend money on anything at a time of immense future uncertainty. Here are some no-money hacks to improve your working capabilities from the comforts and discomforts of your home.

1. Time is Your New Best Friend

Even if you are working from home, try to compartmentalize your schedule for work and family time. Try not to indulge in a nondiscriminatory working pattern, so that you don’t end up procrastinating during the actual work hours and stay up all night to make up for the backlogs. And thus repeat the process — set goals and time-alerts to streamline your tasks.

2. If You Can’t Control Your Desk, Control Your Posture

If the couch or dining table is causing you increased discomfort, try the yogic sitting position ‘Sukhasna’ by sitting on the ground or even on your bed. Keep your back straight and avoid slouching, maybe this can push you more likely to work from procrastination.

3. Breath

Do you know that breathing is also an exercise? So if you are sitting on a Sukasana position, try to breathe easy. Breathing helps in calming the mind, and the calmer your brain, the more stable your focus is.

4. Think Outside of the Room

When you are working from home, through a laptop, you have the freedom of movement! Why not use it. Do you have a balcony? Or a terrace? Any outdoor space within your home would do. Spend some time in the open air to refresh your prowess.

5. Correspond Your Laptop Charging Times with Short Breaks

Don’t let the disturbances get into your nerves. Have a well-coordinated pattern of working. The episodes’ laptop charging, network lagging, and other technical moments can be replaced with healthy breaks, make a cup of coffee, have a chat with family, take 5 minutes of do-nothing moments.

6. Never Work On Your Night Clothes, Never Sleep On Your Work Clothes

Realize that you are not that busy but simply drained of energy. Though there are causes and jobs so crucial that it is likely to occupy immense time and attention of the doers, such workforces do not usually have focus issues. Focus disorientations are most likely to occur when there is room for the subconscious to enter into your conscious. So prioritize your life. Don’t let the time go to waste. Maintain and groom yourself, start a fresh. Wrap up on time.

7. Don’t Let Inactivity Get into Your Muscles

If your movement is largely comprised of walking around the house for essential needs, you are doing major injustice to your body. Lack of movement can make you sluggish and cause your mind to lose focus. So give yourself at least 10 minutes of full-body exercise. Maybe some spot jogging, playing with your pets and children, or dancing to your favorite track can help you bounce back to an excellent mental state.

8. Reduce Visual Clutter

Declutter and Decorate your space. And that includes the overhead cabinets and all the nooks and crannies of your home. An organized and well-maintained home gives you immense mental peace, and thus makes it easier to focus on your work.

Do you know that there is software that is designed to improve focus, typically for remote working environments? Here are the top 4 tools you can try at ease for personal use, as well as to empower your team.

1. Edraw MindMaster

Source: Edraw MindMaster

Sometimes, your focus is disoriented by the complexities of a project or the lack of energy to implement your ideas into a definite prototype. It is not a big task, but sometimes it can be cumbersome. The MindMaster software, designed by Edraw, provides simple yet powerful diagramming resources, with ready-to-use templates, objects, and symbols to give shape to your ideas and create dynamic content. Whether you are struggling with a presentation, design of a mockup, or create an in-depth report, this software is bent on making things more manageable in a simple and even fun way. Its online version also offers a free to use plan, that has the top features of free templates, wide range of doodling tools, along with file importing, and sharing facilities.

2. Hubstaff

Source: Hubstaff

Hubstaff is an employee management software that is powerful enough to implement a full-fledged office environment for a remote working team. With its stringent employee activity monitoring features like time-tracking, scheduling, screenshots, browsing history, and wide-scale of productivity measurement techniques, this software is particularly helpful for employers and managers to keep their team aligned and focused.

3. Headspace

Source: Headspace

Headspace is a unique productivity tool that capitalizes on workplace meditation. It gives you a two-weeks free trial of Meditation courses, sleep, and mindfulness exercises, that are separately designed to address specific needs of students, working-from-home professionals, even homemakers. After the two weeks, it’s your decision whether you need to get the paid subscription. This software is available to download on your Android and iOS mobiles always for anytime access.

4. G Suite

Source: G Suite

The most potent tools, provided by Google, give you the freedom of choice. The significant cloud-based apps for Google Drive - Docs, Spreadsheet, Slides. They are exceptionally helpful in creating, storing, accessing, and sharing all your work and information, without much ado. It is possible to build a healthy relationship with your work while staying focused on the essential things. It is free, and it is mobile integrated and easy to use.

Do you know the magic of the mind? It has the power to make things appear in the way you believe it to be. If you lack focus, then instead of straining on your job, try to pinpoint the thing that is grabbing your attention. Most of the time, it is the lack of interest in a task; sometimes the task is too complicated to distract your focus on; sometimes it is just your dreams that appears like a bioscope in front of your eyes in the middle of a day or in the middle of a task. Give yourself the backing of productive habits and the tools mentioned above if necessary. Take life as an adventure, and move forward with full energy, and smile.