This article is written by Grace Morris.

Introduction

It is arguable whether working from home is better than being present at an office physically. Many experts have analyzed the two options carefully, and the majority seem to accept the fact that work-from-home is more productive than being present at the workplace.

Whether you believe that it is better to work from home, or you think being present at the workplace, physically, is better; what every employer or self-employed business person is concerned about is the level of productivity while working.

That is why you must learn how to be productive while working – either at home or in your office. People who understand how to stay productive during work always win the hearts of their employers. Productive self-employed business people, on the other hand, always get things working for them in their business.

Have you always been productive at your workplace, and maybe you have even earned the commendation of your employer and colleagues, but you are unable to focus and get things done while working from home?

There’s no particular reason why you are finding it challenging to have that same level of productivity, or more, asides from the fact that the workplace setting and the home setting are two different worlds. That is why you have to learn how to make the most of the circumstances in your home to become super productive during work.

Are you already scared of losing your job as an employee, or not meeting your business goals as an employer or self-employed businessman, mainly because you usually fall below the expected margins every single day you set out to work from home?

This simple guide will help you to solve the problem of not being productive. Moreover, the tips I will share with you in this guide will help you to keep yourself morally boosted during work from home, and you’d be just as happy as an office employee that is doing productive work.

Why should you keep yourself Morally Boosted during Work from Home?

It is easy to become dispirited during work from home because the environment does not naturally encourage work. At your workplace, everyone is always busy with one duty or the other, and this will also motivate you to give your best while working.

There are usually distractions at the workplace too. Still, the nature of the environment – the supervision from your superiors, the urgency on the faces of your colleagues, and the pressure your boss is putting on you – won’t make you do less-than-productive work.

But since your home is not your workplace, and you can’t get motivated naturally to do work at home, you need to learn how to keep yourself morally boosted during work from home.

Here are simple tricks that can help you to be morally boosted during work from home:

Make your Workspace within your Home Neat and Comfortable

This is the first thing to do to enjoy a long time of efficiency while working from home. People tend to perform better when they work in a clean environment, and that’s because a clean environment helps in the following ways:

• A clean environment motivates people naturally; moreover, a clean workspace gives a feeling of confidence and motivation, according to “About Leaders.”
• A clean environment also helps you to stay focused while working. (Normally, our concentration tends to reduce after working for a while. So, when there’s an opportunity to be distracted, such as tissue or paper on the ground, dusty tables and windows, and so on, you will usually find yourself spending ample time trying to clean instead of facing your work. But if you lose concentration while working in a clean environment, you can quickly stir up yourself back to work).
• A clean environment can also help people to reduce stress. Work is stressful, but it can be worsened if the environment is dirty. But on the other hand, people feel happy while working in a clean environment, and they can easily overcome stress when they feel burned out.

Besides making your workspace neat, it is vital that you also follow the rules and guidelines of your country or local authority regarding working from home. There are some regulations that everybody working from home must know, and I’ll discuss them briefly in the next paragraph.

What are the Basic Laws Guiding Work from Home?

It is essential to follow the rules of working from home, especially the rules laid down by your country or local community. Generally, many government authorities expect work-from-home employees (or their employers) or self-employed business people to do the following while working from home:

1. Have the cooperation of other people who live in the same place.
2. Ensure the security of premises and must also have a lockable cupboard or desk.
3. Keep critical equipment or sensitive information appropriately, especially where there is a risk of theft or confidentiality breaches.
4. Comply with health and safety regulations of the company (if an employee), country, and authority of the local community.
5. Provide a business telephone line and access to the internet.
6. Provide a computer with access to the internet and emails, access to relevant office software, and access to a printer. And these will make it easier for employees to connect with the company and other staff members from their homes.
7. Provide adequate “Home contents” insurance, which may not cover for losses from business equipment. However, most employers’ insurance coverage caters for damaged or stolen business equipment regardless of the place.
8. Ensure compliance with normal office health and safety requirements.
9. Allow an initial risk evaluation to be carried out by the employer (although an employee may carry out the assessment) to determine if work-from-home is ideal in that particular place, or under a specific condition. Areas to be assessed include the following:

• The layout of the employee’s computer workstation
• The electrical equipment being used
• Are there only extension leads and cables for telephones, computers, and printers? Trailing leads should be discarded
• The ventilation, lighting, and room temperature

Planning Permission

Planning permission is only required if the following are true:

• You do not use only one room to work from home, but maybe multiple rooms or the entire home.
• It is not only those who live in the house that works there.
• the work leads to a substantial volume of visitors, or if the work constitutes a nuisance to neighbours.

So, if any of the statements above are correct, you must get a “Planning permission” to enjoy peace of mind and a natural boost in morale while working from home.

Quick Tip to Avoid Paying Tax for your Work from Home Office

The government or other local authorities may require tax payment for your work-from-home office. Still, you can avoid it by ensuring that the designated office is a space in your home and is used for another secondary purpose, such as a guest room.

There is no way you can avoid paying tax if you set up your work-from-home office in a place that isn’t in your home. However, if you wouldn’t mind paying tax, you can set-up your office in a location other than your home – after all, you’re helping the country to develop, and that is honorable.

Shut Out all Distractions

If you want to enjoy a high level of productivity while working from home, you should shut out all distractions from family, friends, and neighbours.

There are ways you can do that without hurting anyone’s feelings. For example, you can schedule playtime with your kids after lunch. And you’ll have to make them understand that you’re working from home and need all the freedom you can get.

Sometimes, you may be the source of distraction too. And that is the case nowadays where people are more glued to their mobile phones than they are to any other thing, though mobile phones have become very useful for work too.

You can make up your mind to only check your phone for urgent notifications after every one hour, two hours, three hours, or more until you develop the discipline to work without being distracted.

It will also make much sense if the space you converted to your work-from-home office has a toilet and a bathroom. At times when you have to use the restroom or bathroom quickly, you will find it useful.

Finally, people tend to get hungry when they work hard, and that’s normal since the brain uses a lot of glucose while working. To avoid wasting too much time going to the kitchen for a snack or a drink, you can put a small fridge in the office and fill it up with little snacks and drinks when you get hungry.

Practice Effective Time Management

Time management is a challenging thing to master, but if you are determined to learn how to manage time effectively, you won’t have too much problem mastering it.

Poor time management is the reason why many people don’t get to do the things they want to do at work. And when people fail to reach their work goals over and over again, their morale drops considerably.

Time management is so tricky that it will bring things that are not wrong to you. For example, it can suggest that you should try to fix your bad doorknob.

That’s not wrong, right? But that’s also not the best time to do it because you are working and must concentrate on work. The doorknob can be fixed when you have achieved your goals for the day.

Time management has been integrated into the curriculum of many schools both in preliminary learning and in higher institutions of learning; yet, many still do not seem to understand how it works.

But if you learn effective time management, you will be much more morally boosted as you work from home. The more you achieve your work goals, you’ll naturally want to complete more work milestones, and the more morally boosted you’ll be.

Let me add that proper time management is the reason why some other people are successful – not chance or mere wish. If you can manage your time efficiently, you will achieve your goals on time. 

Here are some simple examples of poor time management practices that drain people’s creativity and drag down their morale:

1. Checking your phone for notifications often or to find out what’s happening on social media.
2. Taking too many breaks to sleep, eat a snack, grab a drink, or other unnecessary things that can shift your focus away from work.
3. Not planning and organizing your work correctly before jumping at them can cause you much frustration, and you may end up giving up on work.

Thanks to technology, there are now tools that can help you to manage your time more appropriately and in a fun way. An example of such useful tools is Traqq.

Traqq time tracking app is a tool that helps remote and local teams to keep a record of work time, and it can also be used to log time for personal benefits.

Get yourself a Traqq, and you’ll become better at managing your time so that you can keep yourself morally boosted as you work from home.

Develop a Work Routine

Many experts have shown that people tend to be more effective at what they repeatedly do. It is the reason why great singers never run out of good rhythm and lovely lyrics. 

It’s also the reason why successful people keep becoming more successful. Sadly, many people even fail to reach their goals because they do not know how to keep routines that can help them develop good work ethics.

Let’s not make something difficult out of the whole theory of routines. A routine may be something as simple as reading a book on “productivity” for 15 minutes whenever you are about to start working.

Trust me; if you keep a routine like that, you’ll feel a rush of emotions telling you that you can’t be stopped from reaching all your goals for that day.

Below are some other routines you can take to help you to become morally boosted while you work from home:

1. Write down a list of all that you want to do for the day.
2. Categorize them based on their level of importance.
3. Pick the first two tasks for the day, and resolve that you won’t get distracted until you have completed them.
4. Set breaks for each work milestone, and reward yourself with something fun or unique after completing each milestone.
5. After work for each day, speak to yourself and convince yourself that you are going to be more productive the next day.

The “routine” ideas I shared with you may seem a little weird, but I know that it works because I have become much more productive than I was before by using those methods.

Ensure you Understand what your Work Requirements are

One of the biggest problems in work, and even in other aspects of life, is not having a clear picture of what you’re doing. One of my favorite authors, Brian Tracy, often says that “the worst thing in life is to do very well what should not have been done at all.”

He also quoted the author of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen. R. Covey, in his book, that, “before you begin to scramble up the ladder of success, ensure it is leaning against the right wall.”

Very wise words indeed! If you want to work, and your mind is still fuzzy or unclear about what exactly is expected of you, you may find that your morale has dropped. Moreover, you won’t be able to achieve much of your work goals.

To help you become more productive and morally boosted during work from home, I will share some tips that will help you become clear on your objectives, whether you are an employee or a self-employed individual:

How to Achieve Clarity as an Employee

The following ideas will help you to achieve clarity as an employee, and it will also morally boost you as you work from home.

• Write a list of all what you do for your company and print it
• Present it to your employer and ask him to identify the key areas that will add value to the company
• From those key areas, select the top three and devote all your time, energy, and concentration to them.

How to Achieve Clarity as a Self-employed Individual

Doing the following will help you to maintain a high level of morale boost while working from home:

• Review your business goals and models, and then review your activities to be sure that they can help you achieve your business goals
• As a self-employed individual, your mind will bother about so many things you are not doing. But fix your mind on the three most important tasks that will change your business, and then you can probably delegate the remaining tasks to others.

Conclusion

Keeping yourself boosted, morally, while working from home may seem difficult for the first few days or weeks you start, but you’ll get a lot better and will do more productive work as you keep practising the steps I have shared with you.

References

1. Raymond Chiu; (2019). ‘6 Reasons a Clean Workplace Helps Productivity.’ Accessed April 30, 2020; https://aboutleaders.com/clean-workplace-environment/#gs.51361y
2. Denise Mai; (2020). ‘21 Work From Home Pros and Cons – The Surprising Truth Behind Remote Work;’ Accessed May 1, 2020; https://www.digitalnomadsoul.com/work-from-home-pros-and-cons/
3. (2018). ‘Rules and Regulations for the Self-employed;’ Accessed May 1, 2020; https://www.daslaw.co.uk/blog/rules-and-regulations-for-the-self-employed
4. (2020). ‘Employees Who Work from Home;’ Accessed April 30, 2020; https://www.lawdonut.co.uk/business/employment-law/managing-home-workers-remote-workers-lone-workers/employees-who-work-from-home
5. (2020). ‘Top 10 Morale boosters – Stay Happy and Productive at Work;’ Accessed May 1, 2020; https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/boost-personal-morale.htm
6. (2020). ‘Use your home as a workplace: Building regulations and planning permission for home businesses;’ Accessed April 30, 2020; https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/building-regulations-and-planning-permission-home-businesses

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