Remote work has become one of the most discussed topics in 2020 for obvious reasons. Even though there are a lot of pitfalls and difficulties connected with staying productive, there are still so many people who genuinely think of working remotely a.k.a working from home as an easy level one challenge. Which is actually far more difficult than it seems. In this article, we will talk more about ways to stay productive and get your work and daily tasks done while having a positive state of mind, because these two rarely go together nowadays.
First and foremost, find your productive hours of work. They are different for everyone. Moreover, not only do they depend on your physical and emotional state, but also on the routines of your family members if you work from home. Keep in mind that if your productive hours at the office are from 9 to 11 am, but that’s the time when your child usually wakes up, most likely you will not be able to actively work at that time. Your morning brainstorming sessions will turn into hugging time, and that’s beautiful. However, it might be a good idea to start working at 7 or 8 and use that pleasant family time as a recharging break instead of feeling guilty or irritated every single day. As you may already notice, this tip is not only about getting things done but also about spending stress-free time with your loved ones, which will definitely fill your life with joy and positive emotions.
Secondly, create your own customized checklists for all the tasks and routines that you are to do, both work and home-related. Sometimes, when you are not spending working hours with your team where the work environment pushes you to concentrate precisely on what you are to do, things can get messed up. Especially if you are not going out much. One day flows into another and you can no longer tell if you have answered that email today or it was several days ago. It gets dangerous to fall into a pit of emotional squishiness and despair because when you lose the sense of time, you also lose the possibility to track and celebrate all the small milestones and completed tasks. However, when you do checklists of things that you need to do, both every day and on certain dates, it brings so much structure into your day-to-day life. One little checklist where you mark every single small and essential task as done can make you feel organized and in control of your life at the end of your working day.
Our next advice is concerned with a well-known optimization of processes. No matter how far from your emotional state and well-being this seems to be, it is crucial to make sure all your actions are smart and are performed in the best and fastest possible way. Think about it: when you spend hours and hours on some routine work that does not bring you pleasure, but then you find a way (or an excel formula) that makes the whole process twice shorter, most likely you will feel like you have hacked the system and this whole life altogether! Especially if you are the first one in the company who cared to think twice before doing. Release those dopamines and exercise the personal success muscle!
Next up, use the best tools to keep you organized and speed up all the work-related processes. If you have trouble focusing, you may try out a Pomodoro technique that suggests working for 25 minutes at a time and then taking a 5-minute break. To try it, you can use one of the Chrome extensions that will tell you when it’s time to rest and when it’s time to go back to work. For managing your deadlines and tasks for both work and family life, you may try Notion. It has a lot of benefits because of its versatility and sleek design which you will not be able to fully understand until you try. The same goes for tools that work with files. It is so crucial to have those ready. As all of us are naturally used to working with Word and Excel, both desktop and online, most of the pain is connected with PDFs. For an online pdf converter, we recommend PDFChef, because it also works as a pdf editor, which is nothing but amazing. To create and manage checklists, you might want to try out Nozbe, as another great time-management application. Honestly, there are way more amazing tools to mention, so it can be a good idea to plan several hours for research and follow our third tip, which is the optimization of processes.
Finally, no matter how much delight you get from self-fulfillment, it is vital to think through and plan your rest. Feeling happy after completing a complicated task or reaching a desired milestone is not going to be genuine and deep if you do not have the energy for it. When it comes to rest, there are so many important things to mention. Make sure that you spend time outdoors. Long walks or evening runs after work will help to reset the energy levels and separate work from life. Moreover, it is so needed to let your eyes rest as well! If you feel exhausted and there is no way that you lift your body to go outside, try meditation or gratefulness techniques laying on a couch. However, try not to spend the whole night on your phone or watching TV or looking at anything that you can call a screen. Our eyes do an amazing job and help us tremendously, so there is a point in giving them a break too! While this year does not allow us to see friends and hang out offline that much, there are so many other meaningful ways to connect. We are sure that if you spend an evening writing a long physical letter to your close friend or a family member that you have no chances of meeting in the near future, this night is going to be a pleasant one. Moreover, the receiver of this letter will feel touched and will most likely keep this letter for years, and what is happiness if not having deep connections with others?