Working from home and staying sane: Productivity

This post is especially for those who have been asked to work from home, and who are wondering how to keep up productivity without the benefit of being in your regular space, e.g. an office or desk, that tends to put you into “work mode”.

Obviously, I don’t know your home set-up: do you have a dedicated office or desk just for work? That can be immensely helpful here. While it’s entirely possible to run whole companies from the Boffice (bed + office) and in your pyjamas, for some, this can lead to a hellish spiral of low productivity (because you’re in a leisure space) + negative impact on sleep (because your bed is no longer associated purely with sleep). By all means, give it a go, but look for alternatives if you find yourself spiralling. And one tiny hack I use is to keep a separate Windows user profile for my work: different desktop wallpaper, different apps, passwords for social media sites not saved and hard to access. Even if it doesn’t work in the first five minutes, now that I’ve used it over and over, it affects my head space and therefore my self-discipline.

Similarly, how are you scheduling your work time? The risks here are being “always on”, i.e. working all the time with no rest, and being “never on”, i.e. frittering away the whole day with distractions. Most people’s brains cannot focus for more than around 25 minutes at a time, and even that may be a push for you if you’re used to an extremely interactive environment. One thing you might try is the Pomodoro Technique: the very bare bones of it is a cycle of 25 minutes of work + 5 minutes break, with longer breaks after 3-4 “Poms”, and accompanied by a ticking timer (originally a tomato kitchen timer, hence the name). Naturally, there are a plethora of other timers around: even a basic search for “Pomodoro” brings up a bunch of sites, ditto Android and Apple apps. I use Cuckoo, because it allows me to work solo or with others – you can share the session with as many people as you like.

Speaking of working with others: a truly marvellous strategy when I’m feeling unfocused and demotivated is virtual co-working. The basic format is to start a video call with your co-worker(s), state briefly what you’re going to work on during the session and how long the session will be, switch off audio but keep video on while you work, and report on progress at the end. It’s a little hard to imagine this being at all effective until you try it – or that’s what I found: why would this change anything, you still have to do your work, right? Well, the simple process of stating a goal, working on it, and reporting afterwards is MUCH more effective than just trying to hammer away at something without a stated goal. In addition, you get some accountability: if all you did was twiddle your thumbs, you will have to admit that at the end, so you might choose differently. And it’s just plain encouraging to tell a friend (or even a stranger!) what you’re trying to achieve. If you have a willing friend to try this with, you can just jump on Skype, Facetime, or whatever video call option you already use. For groups, Zoom is a good option: just keep groups small-ish or you won’t even get everyone to state their goals before the time is up. Two to three people are ideal, and you can now conference on Skype, too. If none of your people are into this idea, you could always give it a go with like-minded strangers: FocusMate is free up to 3 sessions a week, and an extremely reasonable $5/month for unlimited sessions. They also have really good explainers for this idea.

So that’s the framework for productivity: but what should you be doing during these work sessions? If you are continuing in your usual job, you will likely have stuff already assigned to work on. Don’t be surprised if you get through it all much quicker without the distractions of the office! Equally, you may be in a position of needing to set boundaries and maybe redefine tasks so that you don’t work yourself into the ground. Either way, I assume you have some methods in place already to manage your workload in the office, so just continue those at home. If you’re embarking on a larger project, here are some small tips to help:

• if your to-do list is plain overwhelming, start a “done” list alongside: write down what you got done as a mental boost. Also, break down tasks to the smallest possible steps and do those. Tiny progress is MUCH better than none, and you will build momentum as you go.
• if you find yourself doing a lot of busywork and not touching your important tasks, get better at setting goals: for every period (e.g. a day or a week, or both. A month is too long though), define one priority goal that you must achieve no matter what, and up to three “nice to have” goals that you can work towards if you have time and energy for them. Shove your busywork to the back of that queue.
• MUSIC! I find music hella motivating, but it does need to be different from my usual fare if I’m working with words (translating, proofreading, writing), because otherwise I am liable to get distracted (I have even been known to write down lyrics in the middle of my work, oops). I find classical, ambient and jazz most useful. Spotify is full of good playlists: search for “Focus” in the Browse tab. I imagine YouTube is similar. Another good tip is Music For Programming, which hits the right blend of active but not stressful beats and no words.
• BREAKS! Do not fall into the trap of thinking you can work without break for hours! You cannot. In the office, breaks are built-in in the form of meetings, phone calls, colleagues and their questions, and so on. You’ll notice in the tips mentioned above, you always alternate between work periods and breaks. Honour both, really commit to only working in work periods and taking proper breaks, or you will max out your willpower within a very short period and stop wanting to get anything done at all.

Back to the overview post.