How To Stay Motivated & Focused Working At Home
SQI Security Entrepreneur Series 38
Crush Your Goals From Anywhere: Achieve Draw-Dropping 100% Remote Success
Introduction
So, you’re stuck working from home? There are now two ways this can go. One option is that you work like so many other people who are conned to home offices. That means you’ll spend a huge chunk of your day procrastinating before you actually get anything done, which will result in work spilling over into your evening. You’ll go to bed with work still on your plate, feeling stressed and behind. Meaning you’ll wake up the next day and start work in your pajamas.
Without someone looking over your shoulder or structuring your day, it’s all too easy to fall into bad habits. You make yourself that morning cup of coffee, you check your emails, you read Facebook… you neglect to shave! It feels like liberation at first, and it’s a great feeling not having to rush out of the door. But as a result, you end up with no structure.
You spend all of your day “half working” and you spend all your time cooped up in one room. Your work life bleeds into your downtime, and you end up falling behind in all kinds of aspects of your productivity AND your personal life. So what is the other option? The other option is that you grasp this opportunity with both hands: that you apply a little strategy and discipline.
Most importantly: you gain the correct mindset that will help you to tackle this unique challenge in the best way possible. And what does all that mean? It means that you can now nish your day’s work in less time. Because let’s face it: most of us waste hours in the workplace on meetings and chatting around the water cooler! It means that you have no commute either, meaning that you probably just gained 2-4 hours of extra time every single day.
You’ll work in a tidy and organized space that is designed specifically to help you feel productive at work, and then you’ll properly relax and unwind in the evenings with the people and things you love. Read this book, and you’ll find that working from home can be the best thing that could happen to you. You’ll be more productive, you’ll earn more, and you’ll have more spare time to work on your self-development, your hobbies, and the things that really matter to you. It’s all about getting into the right mindset, learning to be productive when there is nobody to pile the pressure on, and doing what you can to stay on task.
CREATING THE PERFECT HOME OFFICE
Your ally in the battle to maintain productivity and health while working from home, is your home office. While you might be limited for space, if there is any way possible, then you should design a home office that will be separate from the rest of your home. This is important, because it will allow you to step in and out of your “work mode.” The worst thing you can do is to work in the room you sleep in. This will make it much harder to separate your working life from your downtime, which will have deleterious impacts on your sleep. There are other things you can do to make an ideal home office for productivity too.
Inspiration
One powerful tip is to surround your space with things that inspire you and that put you in the mood to be productive. These might be examples of the best work in your niche or industry, or pictures of your heroes and people who inspire you.
Part of this design involves museums filled with inspirational works. This is something that I feel very strongly about and believe can make a huge difference to overall productivity. This is linked to the psychological concept of “priming.” Priming essentially means putting someone in the frame of mind most conducive to whatever task comes next and it has been linked with memory.
So for instance, if you want to “prime” someone to give positive responses to a question, you might spend twenty minutes complimenting them and giving them chocolate to put them in a good mood. If you want to influence someone’s answers to an inkblot test, you might put them in a room with lots of fruit. This room is supposed to have the same effect, but instead it will put you in the mood to get productive work done.
Organization
One of the most important things to do if you want to make your space as productive as possible, is to keep it organized and tidy. Your space is an outward reflection of your mental state, and if it becomes disorganized and untidy, it will make it harder for you to focus on work. Adopting a minimal décor is one excellent way to do this.
The fewer items you have, the less dusting and organization there is to do. At the same time, this will automatically increase the average quality and value of the items you do keep on display! Another tip is to create systems for keeping things organized. A paper tray system can be very effective for instance when it comes to keeping papers organized, and going paperless is also a very good idea!
Faces and Plants
One of the most important things to do if you want to make your place as productive as possible, is to keep it organized and tidy. Your work space is an outward reflection of your mental state, and if it becomes disorganized and untidy, it will make it harder for you to focus on work. Adopting a minimal décor is one excellent way to do this. The fewer items you have, the less dusting and organization there is to do.
At the same time, this will automatically increase the average quality and value of the items you do keep on display! Another tip is to create systems for keeping things organized. A paper tray system can be very effective for instance when it comes to keeping papers organized, and going paperless is also a very good idea! There are several studies that suggest that humans are supposed to live in small groups or tribes, and that this is the way our brains have evolved. We therefore struggle when we don’t get that stimulation, and our neurochemistry is less conducive to happiness and productivity. But you can “hack” this process as simply as putting a picture with your loved ones on your desk. That’s all it takes to put you in a more productive and positive mindset when starting your day.
FINDING THE INSPIRATION (THE KEY TO INCREDIBLE PRODUCTIVITY)
But THE most important key ingredient for doing lots of great work, is to be passionate and inspired by your work. Inspiration is different from motivation. Motivation is being able to push yourself to work even when you don’t want to. But inspiration means having ideas for how you want your project to turn out. It means visualizing it when it’s complete, and it means wanting to get back to work to put those ideas and plans into action. When you are inspired by work, it becomes intrinsically motivating.
That means that you want to do it for its own sake. One way to accomplish this, is to think about the type of work you’re doing. If you nd that you are consistently being given tasks that you nd dull or boring, or that you really can’t be excited about, then perhaps it is time to assess whether you’re in the right line of work. Should you consider changing jobs?
Because when you find work you really love, you’ll find you become instantly more productive and better at working. Now of course, changing jobs won’t be an option for everyone. You might not have this luxury. Moreover, even if you love your job, there will be still be tasks and jobs that you don’t love. No one loves every single part of their job!
So another thing to do, is to try and look at whatever it is you’re doing, and then make it more interesting. So if there is a particular task you need to do, nd a way to gamify it, or to make it something you are more passionate about. Look at more inspirational examples of the work that you’re doing, try to understand the craft and the artistry that can go into the best examples of that work, and then find a way to turn it into something that you can feel pride in and get excited to do.
Going back to the example of the writer, many writers find they struggle with writers’ block when they reach specific scenes. They get “stuck” on a scene and nd they procrastinate around writing it. Often, they will eventually push through. So why did they get stuck in the first place, and what can they – and you – learn from that? Pushing through is not the solution.
Think about it: if it is that boring to write, think how dull it will be to read! So the answer instead, is to change the scene so that it becomes more interesting and so that you can bring yourself to read it! Maybe set the exposition scene in a more interesting location, have them playing chess, or place a ticking time bomb under the table to add tension. If you love what you do, then you’ll be more than happy to put in extra time.
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