10 Ways to Stay Productive While Working From Home

As more companies start to implement work from home programme as a way to curb COVID-19 and protect their workforce’s wellbeing, for some people this can be their first time experiencing such work arrangement.  Adapting to a new work environment, which is at your home can be daunting for some.At SalesCandy, we pride ourselves as one of the companies in Southeast Asian region to champion this remote & work from home programme where eligible Candyholics are required to work from home 2 days in a week.And today we would like to share with you what you can do to stay productive while working from home, from our 2 years experience running the programme.

1. Create a designated area for work.

Establish the boundary between work and the others. It doesn’t have to be a dedicated room for ‘home office’, but it must be at least an area where:

- You can avoid distraction coming from your other family members (read: kids)

- Not facing areas where you can easily get distracted, for example on the couch in front of TV, or people passing by every minute.

Also, it’s best to avoid having meals at your designated work area, as you don’t want incidents that could destroy your important documents and worse, your work machines.

2. Set & share

Set the target of what you want to achieve on the day as the first thing in the morning and share those targets with your manager, or colleague. Best to share it publicly on your team’s chat room. This will ensure that you will be held accountable to really work on the task and achieve it by the end of the day.

3. Make friend with your calendar

For some, calendar might only be used only for the event notification, or reminder. But starting from today, let’s make the calendar (preferably online) as one of your must visit tools on a daily basis.

Use calendar as your to-do-list. Make your online calendar accessible to your colleague, so that they are aware of what’s going on at a certain time. Example how it looks like on our own calendar, by using Google calendar (it’s free!):

Our calendar now becomes a to-do-list app too!

4.  Dress for success

It’s tempting to just do your work in pyjamas, but hey, let’s treat this as if you are coming to the office & get the same ‘feel’ at home!

5. Practice time block

Besides making an online calendar as your friend, it’s worth trying this time management technique called Pomodoro. Simply put, you will need to break down your time to 25 minutes for work, having a short break then continue with the same time frame. And if you are using Chrome, you can install the following extension: Marinara Pomodoro

With the extension, it works as a timer that will remind you of time for you to have a quick break & when you have to start working back.

Marinara Podomoro Chrome extension

6. Set the right expectation with family members

Tell upfront that you are still working. Work from home is never equal to having time (besides off working hours) to play with them. Or else your kids might otherwise!

7. Maintain the same routine & schedule during working in the office

If you reach the office at a certain time and start your day at a certain time, do the same when you are at home. Say for example you arrive at the office at 8.45am & start work at 9.00am, when working at home, start at 9.00am as well. This to ensure that you will not break the existing work routine & schedule that you already established before.

8. Ensure you have stable & fast Internet connection

We can’t emphasise this enough. Not having a stable and fast Internet connection will simply frustrate you, as well as you won’t be able to have smooth communication especially during the concall meeting with your team members. And because of this, your team has to recap & repeat what has transpired during the meeting, causing them to spend time on unnecessary & avoidable tasks, if you have a stable and fast Internet connection in the first place!

9. Listen to music that can improve your concentration

For some, listening to music might not be their cup of tea. But a research published by Dr. Teresa Lesiuk from University of Windsor, Canada, stated that those listening to music can complete their tasks more quickly and had better ideas overall than those who didn’t.Besides music, you can consider listening to podcasts, especially when it comes to working on repetitive tasks.

10. Watch your diet!

Work from home can mean now you have faster and easier access to foods that you love. And all those junk foods are also now easily accessible.

As cliche as it sounds, health is still, wealth. Regardless of how many hacks, tools, tips that you want to apply to get more productive, it will be meaningless when your health doesn't permit that!