“Working from home” is becoming an emerging trend in Indian corporates. Those looking for a new job want the ability to work remotely. Not just that, according to a recent survey by the recruitment platform, Indeed, nearly half (53%) of those employed consider job change and pay cut as an alternative to remote work conditions.

Remote working is preferred by employees to the extent that nearly 48% of the survey participants, would consider quitting their jobs if their company removes flexible remote working conditions altogether.

Well, employees consider working remotely helps them in maintaining a work-life balance and reduces the stress around their work. While working remotely does help in maintaining the balance, it is not easy for everyone to find that balance.

If you have just hopped on the train of remote work, you may find yourself getting distant from any sort of balance or routine. What this means is you might end up wasting precious hours, working at odd hours, working for too long at a stretch to meet deadlines, and spoiling your health in the process. This evidently would affect your productivity too.

To avoid that, here are a few productivity hacks that can help you stay focussed and organised, even you are your own boss and working from the comfort of your home.

Work usually takes a toll on your mental health. Learn more about how to take care of your mental health by clicking the link.

Get In The Zone

Even if you are working remotely from home, get out of your sweatpants and put on your work pants. According to a recent UK survey, 61% of the women and 53% of the men who work remotely don’t care about getting ready in the morning. Well, don’t be like these Brits.

Getting dressed right in the morning prepares you mentally to get on with your work and keeps unwanted lethargy at bay. It brings you in the “ready to work” mode and cuts down a lot of procrastination you would have indulged into otherwise. While the “getting dressed” facade may sound tedious, it has a great psychological impact on your creativity.

Once you are work ready, get to your work station. Working from home doesn’t mean that you have to work in the cosy confines of your bed or your couch. Designate a set work station at home- a study room or a clean desk. If you work at the same place where you sleep or relax, your brain would automatically go into the relaxation mode, due to the association.

When at your work station, monitor and regulate yourself with a schedule. Tools like Trello and Asana can help you manage your tasks and time well. List down your tasks, add due dates/deadlines to them and stick to it. Deadlines help your brain get in the work zone and help you manage work better.

Source: Trello

Cut Off Distractions

In our everyday life, a big cause of distraction is social media. We want to always be updated in our different circles be it personal or professional. Even at your workstation, there’s a lot that can distract you. From random street noises to social media notifications, a tiny distraction might be enough to put you out of “the zone” for a long time. Well, you can combat these distractions easily.

There are several aspects that can help you cut off different kind of distractions that you may encounter.. Music has been used by a lot of people to get in the zone and cut the distractions out. However, the lyrics can be sometimes distracting. A better way to go about it is to resort to an app like Noisli (available on Android and iOS). It provides soothing ambient sounds for you. It has a slider system that lets you control which sound you listen to and how loud it is.

Source: Noisli

The next thing that could possibly distract you is your social media. You get a notification, you go on Facebook and Instagram to check that. And before you know it, you have wasted 2 hours surfing through them and liking and sharing memes.

Well, there are apps that can help you with that too. Apps like OFFTIME or Social Fever not only monitor your social media usage but also stop you from using them in your off hours. With OFFTIME you can customise your phone usage entirely where it would send custom replies, not allowing you to use the phone altogether.

Make Use Of Technology

In present times, smart work over hard work is sometimes helpful. What this means is that you can make use of all the tools that technology has empowered you with to ease your tasks. You can use Grammarly to write error-free sentences and communicate effectively. Slack can be used as a medium to communicate efficiently with your team and to keep the communication professional. For storing and sharing your files easily, you can use Dropbox. And to record and manage your notes, you can use Google Keep or Evernote. The idea here is that if you regulate, manage and communicate your work in an organised fashion, your productivity will always be at its max.

Source: Dropbox

Take A Break

With that said, people working remotely often end up working beyond their regular timings, putting in extra hours to meet deadlines. In the process, more often than not, relaxation time is compromised.

Enjoying our content? Sign up for our newsletter.

Email Address Full Name Submit

To ensure that it doesn’t happen to you too, add breaks to your schedule. To make the process more efficient, you can use the app, FocusBooster. It aims to improve your focus and productivity using the Pomodoro technique. It is a popular time management technique that divides focused work sessions into manageable, 25-minute intervals (referred to as ‘Pomodoros’).

You can also make use of the meditation app Calm, which provides guided meditations and stress-busters. The duration of this can range from 3 minutes to 25 minutes, which makes it easy to fit into your day.