8 Steps To Make You Wildly More Productive When Working From Home
by Marissa Pomerance
Not trying to burst your bubble, but can we finally acknowledge that, for serial procrastinators, working from home is actually a huge challenge?
Working from home is considered the pinnacle of flexibility—the concept evokes a dream life of getting up early, sipping on hot water with lemon while blitzing up a kale-berry smoothie before settling down for a productive day of work at an Instagram-worthy desk complete with perfectly organized supplies and kill-proof succulents.
In reality, working from home usually means lying in bed scrolling through Instagram and emails while wondering just how long you can procrastinate before feeling guilty enough to get up and brush your teeth.
Because here’s the problem; working from home blurs the lines between work and life. Your day isn’t the standard 9-to-5 as your time is no longer defined by arriving to and leaving from a clear-cut workspace. Instead, since you are always at your place of work, it feels like you have a full 24 hours to get work done, and any minute not productively spent is a minute wasted.
If you’re prone to sleeping in and procrastinating, then working from home is usually a struggle between your lazier instincts and the constantly reinforced narrative that You Should Be Working. If you read celebrity morning routines (Jennifer Lopez woke up at 5:30am to squeeze in a workout out before pole dancing all day on the set of Hustlers? Thank you, next) or listen to Silicon Valley CEOs on NPR podcasts discuss how they manage to “hustle” 80 hours per week while finding time to meditate, workout, cook healthy meals, and spend time with their family, you’ll probably feel pretty lazy for simply rolling out of bed, dragging your body to your laptop, and getting a totally average amount of work done.
But even though we’re not Jennifer Lopez (yet), we have some thoughts for how to become approximately 58% more productive when working from home.
1. Create A Schedule. For Everyone.
With kids and partners and homeschooling and cooking every meal in your kitchen and doing dishes and trying to keep everything clean, keeping yourself and your family to a schedule might be the only way to actually work from home right now while maintaining whatever sanity you have left.
Carve out time for your kids to be keeping themselves busy, so you can have a few uninterrupted hours to work. Give them chores. Give them games. Have them help out around the house as much as possible, which will free up time for you to be more productive. Giving yourself a routine will help you regain at least an ounce of normalcy during these very abnormal times.
2. Stop wasting your time and mental energy admonishing yourself for being “lazy.”
The real problem of working from home isn’t that you accidentally wore your pajamas all day or that you got distracted by a YouTube video; it’s that you constantly judge yourself for not living up to our productivity-obsessed ideal of a smart, hard-working, valuable member of society.
Instead of actually getting work done, you spend your day self-punishing for little slip-ups. You decided to order your lunch instead of making a healthy salad? You’re a fat, lazy, useless pile of nothingness who can’t properly manage money. You couldn’t get yourself out of bed until 11am? You must have no self-control or ambition.
This self-judgement is toxic, pervasive, and let’s not forget--a huge distraction. Making yourself feel bad for being a fallible human is a waste of time and energy, and needs to stop before you can productively, happily work from home.
3. Get up whenever you want.
Getting up at 5am to squeeze in a workout, cold-pressed juice, and homemade breakfast before settling down to work by 7am is a fantasy perpetuated by people with personal trainers and private chefs. Or, you know, just sociopaths.
Waking up at 9am (or *cough* 10:30) doesn’t make you a bad, lazy, or selfish person, just simply a human being with different circadian rhythms. Trying to fight your body’s natural clock is unnatural, unproductive, and helps no one. And let’s be real— good sleep is more important than ever.
Lean into your strengths—if you’re at your most productive at 11pm, then do your work at 11pm! Flexible hours are supposed to be the point of working from home, aren’t they?
4. Ok, so maybe put on some “real” clothes.
We know…this often-repeated suggestion is everywhere, but that’s because it’s one of the few mantras of work-from-home advice that isn’t complete trash.
We’re not suggesting squeezing yourself into an uncomfortable skirt suit and some ridiculous kitten heels, but simply to change out of whatever you were wearing to bed, even if that means just putting on a different pair of pajamas. It will help you disassociate your home with sleeping and relaxing, even if it’s just for a few hours.
Washing your face and brushing your hair helps too because let’s be real—looking into the mirror and seeing at least a semi-awake human will help you feel a bit less lazy.
5. Take breaks. You need them.
You are human. You need breaks. You need to clear your head and have some time to yourself.
No need to force yourself to take breaks at awkward times of the day; if you’re able to focus for a few hours without distractions and bang out some serious work, the last thing you want to do is tear yourself away from your computer lest you interrupt this spark of inspiration. But if you feel yourself getting restless, distracted, or bored, then give yourself what you so crave and take a much-needed break.
6. Give yourself reasonable deadlines (and rewards for sticking to them).
Without the deadlines, structure, and external pressures of a typical office environment (it’s a lot more awkward to spend your entire day online shopping when your coworkers can easily see what you’re doing), working from home is a procrastinating brain’s playground. Your brain will see something inarguably more fun, like a listicle of organizational bins that you’ve decided you apparently need right this second, and think “I can just do this tomorrow!,” even though that small voice of reason knows you absolutely should not.
Your tendency to procrastinate might just mean that you’re still figuring out your productivity window (like doing your best writing at 11pm). But in the meantime, try to give yourself deadlines when you can. We know that, as procrastinators, sticking to deadlines when there’s no one to keep you accountable can seem like an exercise in futility, so we recommend giving yourself a reward (that fancy coffee! A Netflix break!) when you do. You’ve earned it.
7. Find organizational systems that you enjoy.
If you work from home, you’ve probably spent stupid amounts of money on pretty planners and seemingly-important office supplies that you used once, only to then store in the back of your closet with the best of intentions to use again someday.
Our advice? Don’t just look for organizational systems that work, but look for ones that you actually enjoy using. It’s simple; if you don’t like it, you’re never going to use it again.
This process takes time and requires trial-and-error, but there are a million new digital organizational products popping up every day. And once you’ve found something you enjoy, that system can actually be a recurring source of inspiration and self-confidence. For example, checking even something small off your Asana task list, like responding to an email you keep forgetting about, is incredibly satisfying, and gives you a bunch of little moments throughout the day to feel productive.
8. Don’t pretend to work.
If you’ve finished your work, it’s ok to call it a day, even if it’s early. Stay available to your coworkers and boss if you need to, but there’s no need to sit idly in front of your computer wondering what else you can get done today. In fact, use that leftover time to take care of yourself. Take a walk. Play with your kids. Spend some quality time with your partner.
Because here’s another inefficient thing we do when we work from home: penalize ourselves for not spending our entire lives working. You’re supposed to have a life, and it’s ok (even, dare I say, preferable) to live it. If you get your work done quickly or you have a light week of work, this doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job. In fact, you’re probably pretty good at it. Efficient, even.
Marissa Pomerance is the Managing Editor of The Candidly. She’s a Los Angeles native and lover of all things food, style, beauty, and wellness. You can find more of her articles here.
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