How To Stay Active Working From Home
Working from home can be extremely difficult and challenging. The advent of the digital transformation era has encouraged many companies to adopt the work from home model. The outbreak of coronavirus also played a role in popularizing the concept of working from home.
To effectively work from home, an employee must possess a certain level of discipline.
What Working From Home Means
Working from home (WFH) means that an employee is working from their place of residence rather than working from the office. There are organizations that have a working from home policy that allows their employees to work from home either full-time or part-time.
According to the Global State of Remote Work, 40% of companies are hybrid-this implies that they allow their employees to work in the office or remotely.
How To Stay Active Working From Home
There are different ways that an employee can stay active while working from home. The fact that you work from home does not mean that you have to spend your day engaging in activities that are not productive.
Here are the following ways to stay active while working from home.
- Have a daily routine: It is very important to have a daily routine. Having a daily routine helps you to know what to do, when to do it and how to do it.
- Change your mindset: Everything begins with the mind. The law of attraction quotes: You are what you think”, “our thoughts become things”, ” success begins in the mind”, and ” whatever the mind of man can conceive, he can achieve”.
Confucius once said, ” He who thinks he can and he who thinks he can’t are both right”. If you think you can become more active and productive working from home, then you will become more active and productive. To stay active, you need to let go of the feelings of inadequacy and self damnation and replace them with the thought of possibilities and positivity. Having the right mindset will help you to become more active and productive.
Assess how you spend your time: Assessing the amount of time you spend executing a task is very important. By assessing the time you spend executing a task, you can easily see what habits may be keeping you from being active and replace them with activities that will make you more active.
3. Exercise: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you should get a minimum of 150 minutes of physical activity each week. Studies have shown that exercising reduces anxiety, and depression boosts your overall energy and helps you to stay focused.
It is very important to stay active especially when a huge part of your day may be spent sitting on a chair. Aside from the fact that regular exercising keeps you fit, it also helps to build the immune system of your body. Remember, it is only when you are healthy that you can be active.
- Keep exercise equipment on standby: Beyond designating a specific time to take a walk, it is advisable to leave work-out equipment like resistance bands, exercise mats, and push-up bars where you can see them. Keeping your exercising equipment at a close range helps you to take breaks in between work to relax your nerves and become more productive.
- Set clear goals: What are your goals? What tasks do you hope to complete before the end of the day? Why are they important to you? What should be the consequences of not achieving these goals? When you ask yourself these questions, you may find out that there are some goals that require urgent execution while some tasks may be executed later or the next day.
Setting a clear goal will help you to properly allocate the time that you will spend to carry out each activity that will help you to achieve your goals.
For example, your goals may be:
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- Send a price quotation to a client before 8:00 am the next day.
- A visit to the grocery store to get groceries.
- Clear your inbox of irrelevant messages.
You can see that (i) requires urgency, (ii) is important but does not require immediate execution while (iii) is not so important.
- Avoid multitasking: Studies have shown that multitasking increases stress and leads to memory impairment. There are different things seeking your attention when you work from home. The temptation to execute all the tasks at once is very high. Understand that you can not juggle all the tasks at once.
Execute a task before you move on to the next task. This will help you to stay active and productive.
- Delegate: Trying to control all aspects of your work will stretch you thin. There are some tasks that you don’t have to execute yourself. You can delegate or outsource to someone else. You don’t have to be everything: a graphics designer, social media marketer, cleaner, and a cook all at once.
You can hire a personal assistant to take some of the work off your shoulders.
- Get up earlier: Getting up a little earlier helps you to kickstart your day on a high note alongside successfully executing your morning routine. If you are going to meditate, exercise, or get your kids ready for school, getting these things done early gives you fulfillment.
For example: If you wake up at 7:00 am, try waking up an hour earlier so you give ample time to plan your day.
- Plan your day the night before: knowing that you have an idea of what you are going to do the next day helps you to look forward to the new day with so much excitement, enthusiasm, and renewed energy. Planning your day the night before gives you peace of mind.
- 10: Have a to-do list: One of the effective ways to stay active and productive while working from home is to have a to-do list. Having a to-do list helps you to stay focused on the task at hand and avoid getting distracted.
- Shorten your to-do list: There are some tasks that you should not include in your to-do list. When you draw out your to-do list, you may discover that some tasks have already been executed or are not that important compared to the other tasks.
Study and trim down your to-do list till you are sure that you have only the things you need to do for the day or the ones that you are sure of executing.
- Create a schedule: Creating a schedule while working from home is very important. Having a schedule helps you to discover what your priorities are to avoid spending your time unwisely.
However, scheduling your day improves your productivity. It’s easier to get things done when there is a schedule. If you want to stay active working from home, create a schedule. If you don’t schedule your day, it may be difficult to get a task done.
- Stick to your schedule: It is one thing to create a schedule for your day and another thing to follow it up. Sticking to your schedule helps you to avoid distractions and get the job done.
- Execute the biggest task first: Sometimes, you may push aside big goals because you are not confident that you will accomplish them. Executing the bigger tasks first helps you to execute the smaller task with ease.
- Find a suitable position: Finding a suitable position where you can effectively work from your home is not negotiable. If you want to get things done, you need to create a suitable environment where you can get things done without getting distracted. This is highly recommended if you have kids in your house.
- Take breaks: Do not soak yourself into your job that you forget to take a break. Working for hours unending does not mean that you will get more work done or execute all the tasks on your to-do list rather it will reduce your energy and increase exhaustion.
Taking a break helps you to be more focused. You can take a walk, a nap or you can play a game. Research has shown that taking regular breaks helps in boosting your mood.
- Tidy your workspace: Working in a disorganized space can be psychologically unsettling and can reduce your productivity. Keep your workspace organized and let it be void of any potential distractions.
- Eat healthy: While you work from home the tendency to eat anything within your reach is unavoidable. When you feed on unhealthy foods, it is most likely that your productivity level will reduce. Unhealthy eating makes you grumpy and lazy. It is important to eat a balanced diet.
- Do not stay on your sleep wears: Working from home requires discipline. To get yourself into the work mode, it’s important that you change from your sleepwear and put on something comfortable and work-worthy.
- Avoid distractions: Distractions are huge time wasters. Distractions can come in the form of kids, spouses, pets, noise, social media, etc. To get rid of distractions, you can get a private place where you can work, turn off the television, and allow your kids and pets to play outside your workspace. Your workspace should be a private space and it is important to discuss this with your family so that they can understand that when you are in your workspace, you don’t need any distractions.
- Track your progress: Knowing how far you have gone in executing and accomplishing a task is self-motivating.
- Get enough sleep: Depriving yourself of sleep can have a negative effect on your performance. Lack of sleep reduces your logical reasoning and concentration on the task at hand
- Connect with people: Working from home can get boring sometimes. You can organize a mini hang out with your friends outside your work space-this will help you to unwind and release all the anxiety and stress that comes with working in an environment where you have to play the role of a boss and an employee at the same time.
- Reward yourself: Sometimes you can get so overwhelmed with your work that you forget to celebrate your little wins. Celebrating your wins and successes is a big motivating factor. You don’t need to go over and beyond to celebrate. Something small but significant will do.
For example, you can take yourself out on a movie date.
In conclusion, distractions, procrastination and lack of proper time management can hinder you from being active. As long as you have the right mindset, you can be active and productive when you work from home.