People who work from home find that they are doing a lot more work than what they were doing when they were in the office. It’s also much more challenging to remain productive when you’re working in a place where you used to relax and rest away from work.
Before that, people used to think that working from home is a lot more fun. It also opens them up for more opportunities to relax. However, now they are faced with the challenge of remaining productive while working from home while still having fun doing it.
There is no denying that productivity and having fun are things that we continuously chase after. Nonetheless, there are steps that we can take to make working from home both fun and productive.
To help you achieve both, here are 14 simple ways to make work from home fun yet productive:
1. Create A Dedicated Workstation
It’s challenging to remain productive while working from home. More so, if you don’t have a dedicated working space in your house.
When you’re lying down on your sofa or bed while working, it isn’t the most conducive work environment.
Your sofa or bed is a place dedicated to rest. You can’t expect your mind to easily adjust from thinking it’s a place of rest to a place where you have to be productive. The solution to this problem would be to create a dedicated workstation somewhere in your home.
You don’t need to have an entire room to yourself solely dedicated to being a workstation to achieve this goal. Having a desk in one corner of your bedroom can be sufficient if you create the right environment.
As long as you cut it off in some way from the rest of your home, it will serve as a sufficient place to work.
2. Separate Work & Personal Time
One of the reasons people are having a difficult time having fun when they’re working from home is because they can’t separate work from their time. The boundaries between work and personal time are blurrier since you’re working from home.
Many superiors are of the wrong mindset that their employees are freer to do whatever they bid to do since they work from home. Clients can even take up your time outside of work hours because of this poor boundary setting.
If you don’t separate your work and personal time, you’re going to find your time bleeding into your work and vice versa. To set boundaries, you can communicate it with your superiors, coworkers, clients, and family.
Communicating it to them beforehand will make it clear for both of you when it’s best to contact each other. That way, nobody is overstepping anybody else’s boundaries.
3. Come Up With A Morning Routine
To enjoy working from home, you need to make the most of the perks you get from it. One of the most enjoyable perks of working from home is that you don’t have to rush every morning to get to the office. You can now create a more personalized morning routine fit for your work style.
You can spend that extra time in the morning having an actual healthy breakfast and brewing yourself a cup of coffee before work. You can also spend this time relaxing and maybe go meditating or exercising.
This extra time you get in the morning from working from home means you get to do whatever you want. It’s a quiet moment to yourself before the rest of the world wakes up, so try and come up with the morning routine that you enjoy to get you started every day.
4. Squeeze Exercise Into Your Day
Exercise is a great way to keep your energy up throughout your workday. When you do it in the morning, it can also help wake you up. Aside from that, it’s the right way of remaining physically healthy despite being cooped up at home.
When you work from home, you have extra time to devote to exercise, unlike when you have to commute to work.
5. Eat Healthy Meals & Snacks
If you accompany your workday with a lot of unhealthy snacks and meals, it can make you feel groggy. Now that you work from home, you get to have more say of the meals that you eat. Therefore, you should use that opportunity to eat healthier meals and prepare healthy snacks you can eat throughout the day.
6. Dress The Part
Instead of dressing up only when you have online meetings, it would be best to dress the part for the entire day. Doing so allows you to have the right mindset even when you’re working from home.
When you look like a professional, you’re going to feel like a professional, which would help with your productivity.
7. Establish Work Hours
Establishing dedicated work hours will help you stop working when you need to do so. If you’re a bit of a workaholic, you find yourself working into the wee hours of the night if you don’t control yourself. Having established work hours will help you avoid this issue.
8. Set Some Ground Rules
You need to set some ground rules about your work-from-home situation with your family members and coworkers.
When it’s time for you to work, you should tell your house members not to bother you until you finish. When the time for you to work is over, you should now say to your coworkers and clients that you will get back to them once work hours are on again.
9. Take Short Breaks & Look After Yourself
Although it’s good to aim for productivity, you still need to watch out for yourself. It’s hard to remain productive when your body isn’t feeling well. Therefore, you should make sure that you take the short breaks that your body needs to recenter itself.
Take your lunch breaks, and don’t forget to take a few short breaks to rest your eyes and stretch your body.
10. Solidify Your Schedule The Day Before
Having an actual daily schedule that you follow will make it easier for you to understand the tasks you need to finish. Scheduling your plan the night before you work will help you get things straight before the actual workday.
11. Communicate & Check Up On Your Teammates
Sometimes, you need people to bounce your ideas back and forth with, and these people are supposed to be your coworkers. Although you’re working from home, it doesn’t mean you can’t communicate and check-up with your teammates.
It doesn’t have to be for the entire workday. Even an hour or so of your day to brainstorm with coworkers can be beneficial to you.
12. Create A Vision Board
When you’re stuck at home working and doing everything else, each day can feel similar. It can be hard to think about your future.
Creating a vision board of your plans will make it easier for you to look forward to the things you want to do in the future. You can use it as an inspiration that will motivate you whenever you’re feeling a little uninspired.
13. Avoid Mindless Use Of Social Media
Social media can feel and be a lot of fun, but it can also be mentally draining. Aside from that, it’s very distracting, which affects your productivity.
When you’re in the middle of work, try and avoid social media as much as possible. You can use apps that block specific websites or put your phone out of your reach when you’re working.
Social media can be a powerful tool, but it can create adverse effects on your mental health if you use it mindlessly.
14. Know When To Call It A Day
Knowing when to stop is an issue for a lot of people working from home nowadays. The key is to stick to a goal for the day, and when you accomplish it, you should feel free to end the day then. Anything else will be an extra.
Over to You
It may seem impossible if you haven’t made an effort yet, but working from home can be both productive and fun. If you make an effort to set your boundaries and practice better work ethics, you will quickly achieve both of these.
Adapt to these work tips, and you’re soon going to find that working from home is a lot easier than you when you first started out doing it. Try them out!
