Working from home ?
Here’s 6 actionable tips to help you stop procrastinating.
Working from home is becoming increasingly common, but it’s not quite as blissful as you might think.
There’s no doubting that working from home can be extremely enjoyable and productive, but it brings with it several challenges – chief of which is procrastination.
What is Procrastination?
Every human being on the planet is capable of and susceptible to procrastination.
It’s when we have something important to undertake but find ourselves being distracted by something else.
That something else isn’t necessarily less important or a waste of time, but it isn’t appropriate for that moment in time. It gets in the way of you achieving the task you should be working on and is a poor use of the time you have available.
Why Can Procrastination Be a Big Problem for Freelancers and People Working from Home?
Working from home should be a brilliant way to raise your productivity levels. Unfortunately, procrastination is a productivity killer.
It stops you focusing on what’s important and leads you down rabbit holes that eat away at your time.
There’s no silver bullet to stop procrastinating; it’s something that will inevitably happen occasionally if you work from home. There are, however, some strategies you can lean on to prevent it from taking over your working life.
How to Stop Procrastinating
So, you’ve decided to work from home but are concerned about how much you can get done.
Don’t worry – follow these simple actionable tips to stop procrastinating and raise your productivity levels.
1. Plan Ahead
When working from home, make sure you pan ahead. The more you understand what you need to do for the rest of the week, the more you can ensure you focus on those tasks, rather than procrastinating.
2. Don’t Plan Too Much
Planning ahead is important, but if you want to stop procrastinating, it’s vital that you don’t plan too much.
There’s nothing more soul destroying than a colossal to-do list. The mere sight of it may in fact lead you to immediately begin procrastinating to take your mind off the tasks you’ve set yourself.
Stick to three achievable main tasks per day.
3. Use Systems and Tools
Productivity is hard to tame and maintain a consistent approach with, but there are plenty of systems and tools you can use to make it easier and remain procrastination-free
Here’s some of the best:
- The Pomodoro Technique
- Inbox zero – a big topic, but essentially the process of keeping your email inbox free of unread messages by dealing with it at set intervals each day
- Time blocking – this is all about working on big and small tasks one at a time and not being bound by a standard 9-5 day
4. Try Making Your Phone Distraction-Free
This doesn’t mean deleting every app from your phone – instead, you can simply remove those that are rarely used but which you find yourself opening whenever you want to ‘escape work’.
Try turning off all but the most important notifications, too. Phone calls and text messages are more important than Facebook updates.
Have you got a distraction free smartphone?
5. Utilise the 2-Minute Rule
This is simple. If something on your to-do list will take two minutes or less, do it there and then – don’t put it off.
The more two-minute tasks you undertake, the more time you’ll have to yourself later in the day, and that should mean less procrastination during work time.
6. Start With the Dreaded First
We all have tasks on our daily lists that we’d rather avoid, but that can easily lead to procrastination.
To avoid this, tackle those dreaded tasks first. Some call this the Eat That Frog principle, and it really does work.
Wrapping up
If you’re just starting to work from home or have been doing so for some time, the actionable tips above will ensure you’re as productive as you can be by removing your desire to procrastinate.
It’s also much easier than you might think, too.
Good luck!
