Gone are the days when you must go to the office five times a week. This may be a blessing for some but a curse for others. Working from home may allow you more freedom, waste time, and slack off.

I want to discuss some of my work-from-home productivity tricks in today's post. You can use these tools and tactics to focus on what’s essential and not meaningless. These tools can be used for your job or even just managing your work from home to your actual life.

Working from home can have perks such as; no office commute, no bosses, no negative coworkers, and the ability to get home tasks done and control your schedule more (depending on circumstances).

Working from home can also have its downfalls, such as; no bosses, no coworkers, no change of scenery, staying home instead of getting outside and moving, less structure, and potentially more distractions.

As you can see, working from home has many pros and cons. While some of you may prefer one over the other, I’m here to provide insight on how to be more productive while working from home.

For some, less structure and supervision from team leads can be detrimental to your focus and productivity during your work day. Not having a schedule or timeline to follow throughout the day can make it more challenging to stick to what’s essential.

I’ve found a few tools that help me focus on what matters and limit distractions throughout the day. Here they are:

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Take Breaks

Wait, isn’t taking breaks the opposite of productivity? While it may seem like that initially, you’d be shocked at what a small break can do for you regarding productivity.

The old school mentality is to work and keep working until you are tired, brain dead, and completely useless. At the same time, the new school mentality is to have breaks to ensure massive production.

I have always been a fan of taking breaks during work. This isn’t lazy but the opposite. I love being productive and the feeling it gives me when producing the best results. I know firsthand the importance of what breaks can do to your performance.

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A post from Integrify, which can be found HERE says there are four key benefits when it comes to breaks. They are:

1. Help you focus

2. Improves performance

3. Find creative solutions to problems

4. Lowers stress

If you want to learn more about how breaks can improve these areas, you can check out their full blog post here.

Work in Sections

Time sections allow me to stay focused for a set amount of time. These can be called blocks or chunks as well. A time section is when you set a working timer for a set amount of time. I like to go for about one hour and fifteen minutes or 75 total minutes.

I set a timer on my phone, limit distractions (which we’ll cover next) and focus on deep work. Deep work is focused on uninterrupted work for a set amount of time. This is when you focus on ONE task and nothing else.

Working in sections sets you up for taking breaks (which we covered earlier). Work for your desired time block, and then take a fifteen-minute break. Let’s say you want to start your focused workday at 6:00 a.m. You would set a timer for one hour and fifteen minutes or until 7:15 a.m. At this time, you would take a fifteen-minute break. At 7:30 a.m., you would resume with another hour and fifteen-minute working time block until 8:45 a.m.

You can continue this cycle until lunch or until you start to lose focus (usually after a couple of these for most people).

Working in sections allows you to focus. You’re not concerned about the eight, ten, or twelve-hour day ahead. Rather just the small-time block set up in front of you. I’ve found this system to work very well when wanting to focus intensely on an important project or task.

The breaks allow you to rest, recharge, and recover your brain power. Once rested, you’re ready to go for another round of focus.

This leads me to my last trick. How can you possibly focus on deep work with constant distractions? Various devices and apps come from chimes, ringing, pings, and noises. Read on to find out how to eliminate these and get important work DONE.

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Eliminate Distractions Once and for All

Distractions can be the death of your productivity, especially in today’s day and age. Distractions and low attention spans continue to destroy your productivity every day. Right from the get-go, you must be prepared to limit or eliminate all distractions BEFORE they occur.

My iPhone trick I love is to eliminate distractions. You can access all the Focus modes if your iPhone device runs iOS 15 or later.

Unlock your phone and pull down from the top right, then click on the Focus button. Here you will get a dropdown menu of available options: do not disturb, work, sleep, and personal.

All of these modes can be individually set up to your preferences. The most important thing is to know how to access the button and activate your work or do not disturb mode.

Once you do this (depending on your settings) all of your notifications, messages, calls, and emails will be turned to silent. This will ensure that you eliminate most, if not all, of your distractions at the click of a button.

When I start my timer for my work section, as previously described, I will also activate my Work mode on my phone. I then move my phone off to the side and turn it face DOWN. This ensures that I don’t look at or glance at my phone for any reason.

If someone does message or email you, don’t worry, you’ll still receive the message, although your phone won’t notify you when in focus mode.

If you don’t use an iPhone or have iOS15 installed, don’t worry. I also have a trick for Android users (as I was once part of your club).

Swipe down from the top of your Android device and activate Airplane mode. This will turn off all sending and receiving signals. Note when using this method: you will NOT receive any phone calls or text messages. Some functions may still work if you’re still connected to WiFi.

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Well, there you have it. My tricks to ensuring working from home is productive every day!

Here’s a quick recap of what we covered:

Take Breaks

If you want to work efficiently, breaks are necessary. They will help with focus, performance, creativity, and stress relief.

Work in Sections

Working in sections allows you to focus on deep work for a set amount of time.

Eliminate Distractions

Turn your phone or devices onto Focus or Airplane mode. Eliminate chimes and rings before they happen.

Use these three tools to increase your productivity while working from home. No boss, no problem! You now have the tools you need to get more important work done.

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Chris M Wilson