5 ways to be more productive while working from home

The past few years have been a rollercoaster ride from hell for most of us, having to figure out how to work effectively from home has been a challenge for us too. If you’re also having trouble finding your “groove” working from home then this article is perfect for you!


Many businesses are hesitant to allow workers to work from home because they think it will reduce productivity. This isn't completely incorrect. It's simple to become sidetracked, put off tasks, or work less diligently from home than at the workplace.

Fortunately executives’ pre-conceived notions of productivity have been blown out of the water, working from home boosts productivity by 13%, according to a Standford study of 16,000 employees over a 9-month period. According to a ConnectSolutions poll, 77% of those who work remotely at least occasionally report higher productivity, with 30% doing more work in less time and 24% producing more work in the same amount of time.

This is all well and great but it is not a universal experience across all those who work at home and so this article is here for you if you can relate to being unproductive whilst working at home. Here are the 5 hacks below.

Step 1- Choose the right spot!

As convenient and comfy as it would be to just roll over in bed and grab your computer or tablet, it simply isn’t as effective as having a dedicated spot within your house to get all your work done. Separate rooms with lots of natural light typically make great productive home offices. It may seem redundant or like a simple psychological trick but our brains are wonderous organisms and simple tricks like this really do work.

Making a physical contrast between working and unwinding in separate areas of your home, may assist to make the distinction between your personal and professional lives much more obvious and thus easier to navigate, making you more productive.

Step 2- Keep a tidy work station

You ever heard the phrase, “you are what you eat”? Well the same can be said for your work environment, a messy or cluttered work space is more often the root for an unproductive day. For example, you wake up to the mess you left yesterday and subsequently spend the morning clearing your space for the day, before you know it its 11am and you have lost half the day. Another scenario to is this, you ignore the mess on your desk and decide to “power through it”. This might work for a little while but sooner or later you will look for the odd stapler, flash disk or report and you wont be able to find it. We have all been there, its incredibly frustrating and can ruin your work flow. If this sounds familiar to you then check out our selection of focus mats @focusnomad.com.

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Avoid this issue by giving yourself time to clean-up after a day of work, it doesn’t have to be thorough, just enough to make sure you can start work the next day without having to cut a path through the jungle you call a desk!

Step 3- Stay off Social Media

In an ideal situation, we would have said limit your time on social media but the reality of how social media platforms actually work makes it very difficult to manage time spent on any one particular site. We’ve all had the “I will just check Insta for a second” that turns into 30 minutes and we have no idea where the time went.

Best tip from us would be to avoid social media completely, put your phone away if you cannot ignore it and partition your work rate, by this we mean to punctuate your day with occasional 15 minute breaks, i.e. the [Pomodoro Focus Technique], click the underlined text check out our productivity hack post!

Step 4- Have Home Office rules

You may have a child or two running around at home or maybe even a dog. Often times when working from home, your family will fail to respect that you are still working, so setting boundaries is vital. In a similar fashion to keeping a tidy workspace, you yourself should stick to your typical work hygiene habits and dress, it is a psychological trick but trust us it works to make you more productive.

Step 5- Have a schedule that works for you!

Arguably the biggest benefit of working from home- no-one cares how you do your work as long as you’ve done it well and on time. Take advantage of this aspect of working at home by setting up your own schedule that works for you. You know about “early birds and night-owls”, these are sleep chronotypes/chronobiology and they determine when you feel the most awake and are most productive.

An article from [L’officiel] highlights how you can best leverage your chronotype for productivity.

For more awesome productivity articles check out our blog home page for lots more!