How to Tune Out Distractions While Working During the Pandemic

With the COVID-19 pandemic taking away thousands of lives, world leaders put their countries under lockdown. People have been forced to stay indoors and work from home. While this setup gives employees more free time and breaks between each hustle, it also makes it difficult for them to tune out distractions. We understand how this threatens one’s productivity, so we listed down some WFH tips for you.

Set Up a Workstation

Work from home presents the perfect opportunity to get things done while lying in bed. This is fine, since who wouldn’t want to work while wearing pajamas, right? Now, we understand why it is tempting to do so, but this setup makes it hard for your body to distinguish time for work and time for rest. To maintain work from home focus, it’s essential that you set up a workstation. This area should be free from distractions and contain all the supplies you need for work.

Create a Work Schedule

One of the WFH tips you’ll hear from anyone who’s mastered the art of working from home, is to create a schedule. It can be tempting to push off tasks and sleep in, but this can backfire eventually. Combat procrastination by creating your work hours and making sure you stick to it. If you have kids, work your schedule around their routine so you can spend time with them without making your work suffer.

Switch Off Notifications

While notifications are effective in giving us updates about work (and other things), it presents a threat to our work from home focus. If you want to stay on track, it’s best that you switch off your notifications. By doing this, you won’t get distracted when your phone beeps and you won’t feel compelled to reply to emails or chats.

Make a List of Priorities

Working from home can be a bit overwhelming, especially if there are so many things that need to be done all at once. List down the things you need to accomplish, and prioritize the ones that are important. You eliminate stressing yourself out, and you allow yourself to work on each task perfectly if you do this. Once you’re done, allow yourself time to rest before jumping on the next item on the list. You can also choose your hobby or can learn new things; maybe you can start your own blog, can opt for a course or can lean designing with tools like Canva or Photoshop.

Focus on a Single Task

Most of us want to multitask, but this often leads to lack of focus, and poor outputs. Working from home means we have to strive harder to get the job done and one way to do this is to focus on one task. This way, you won’t miss important details and you can finish tasks far sooner than you expected.

Walking from is not a walk in the park. Just like in the office, you need to prepare yourself before shifting to “work mode.” This is why you need a designated area, schedule, or even “uniform” to help your body get in the zone and stay in it.

About the Author: Rekha Pant

Rekha Pant, IT professional, Business Developer, a writer in different topics like Digital Communication, Education, Marketing, Personality and IT.

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