3 Powerful Productivity Boosters When Working From Home

Whether you’re a home-based entrepreneur or you work for others, working remotely can provide a big productivity boost - as long as you do it the right way, of course! Though June 30 is National Work From Home Day, you can also use these productivity tips when you’re at the office too.

The 7 Ps of Productivity for business owners (and those who work for a business)

Heard about the 7 Ps of planning (supposedly from the British army)? Prior proper planning prevents piss-poor performance. But the planning Ps can be adapted for you to be more effective in business too: prior proper planning promotes prime productivity & performance!

Busy people constantly do things, drop what they’re doing to work on something else, and come back to the original thing (or forget about it completely.) Always putting out fires is busy. But as I’ve said before (and will likely say again): being busy is not being productive. 

Moving from task to task without completing any isn’t going to move you forward in your business. Doing whatever task comes up when it occurs doesn’t help you accomplish the important things. If you want to be productive and get your priorities completed, you must be intentional about what you’re doing.

And to be intentional, you need to plan. What are your priorities for the day? You’ve got limited time and energy, so don’t whip out your 237-item to do list. Pick out your top 3, no more than 5, to get done during the day. Then plan out how you’re going to get them done.

Build in breaks

There are a lot of things that can be distracting when you work from home: cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, etc. They’re easy to do and if you don’t plan your day, you might end up doing more chores than not. Then you’ll feel guilty, maybe enough to keep working long past when your brain is done with the day.

The human brain is just not capable of doing cognitively demanding work at a high performance level for hours at a time. It doesn’t matter how smart you are; the way the brain works doesn’t allow it. 

However, you can do cognitively demanding work at a high performance level for a while, then take a break, and then come back to it refreshed and ready to perform again. Neuroscience estimates total focus time per day tops out around 4 to 4 ½ hours, but that’s long enough to accomplish quite a bit.)

Human brains are capable of focusing on demanding tasks for 45 minutes to an hour, give or take. So working for 45 minutes, taking a 15 minute brain break, and then getting back to it is reasonable and fairly easy to build a schedule around.

HOWEVER. It is important that you give the brain an actual break. This isn’t time to read your emails or scroll through your social media feeds. Talking to a friend (not about a thorny work problem), doing a bit of a hobby that you like, exercising, or doing some chores around the house does allow your brain to recharge and refresh. 

In other words, use the brain breaks that boost productivity to take care of the chores. Now you get those nagging chores out of the way, and still accomplish the work that you need to.

Manage your energy

You’ve probably heard this referred to as “time management”. And it is managing your time, but in a way that allows you to maximize your energy and focus. 

Depending on your sleep chronotype, which describes your internal clock, there are different times of the day when you’re better at doing certain things compared to others.

Those 4 to 4 ½ hours that you get for hard brain work can be maximized when you do the hard work during the time that you’re most able to focus. If you’re a morning worker, you’ll squander that time before noon if you use it for meetings and reading emails. You could be much more productive if you changed your schedule to match your energy.

For example, I’m writing this in the morning, because I’m a “bear” chronotype and mornings are my best time for focused work. I can get about 50% more words written if I type at this time compared to the afternoon. That’s the time that’s better for me to do emails and take meetings. 

Use routines and rituals

Having some structure to the day paradoxically can help you be more creative. You don’t have to think about making a lot of decisions that will drain your brain and wear it out. Being bored and staring into space is actually necessary for creativity, but because our modern world expects people to be on the go all the time, you have to make the time for it!

Decision fatigue is real, and if you want to be productive you really do need brain space for the tough decisions and not to wear yourself out with lots of little stuff. That’s where routines come into play: Build the little stuff into routines that you don’t really have to think about. Don’t leave your phone in the bedroom at night: charge it elsewhere. Buy an alarm clock instead of using your phone. That way in the morning you can have a routine that sets you up positively during the day. That routine might include body movement, breakfast, meditation or journaling, reading, podcast, whatever gets you ready. Theme music? Sure!

At the end of the workday, give yourself a routine and/or a ritual to mark the boundary between work and home. Tidy up the workspace and list the 3 priorities you need to tackle for the next day. That’s especially helpful for people who procrastinate, because you don’t have to decide in the morning what you’re doing: you just start on the task.

While routines are something you do on autopilot, rituals are something you do intentionally and mindfully. A ritual could be mocktail or cocktail hour before dinner, or a walk with the family, or having dinner with the family. Anything that you enjoy that you can be in the moment for. 

It should go without saying, but probably doesn’t: no phones while you’re spending time with friends and family! Or having your drinks hour, or whatever.

Recap: 

Prior proper planning promotes prime productivity and performance. Being busy won’t get you anywhere, but being intentional about what you’re doing will. Do your house chores during the breaks you need to take for your brain to recharge, and use rituals and routines to reduce decision fatigue.