No matter how great or comfortable your home office is, the truth of the matter is that when you’re home, you’d rather be doing anything but working. So the real goal of any home office is to maximize your productivity so that you can get your work done quickly and get back to your family and free time. If you’re looking for tips for organizing your home office to maximize your productivity, you’ve come to the right place. These 5 tips are sure to get you off on the right foot!
Tip 1:Face Away from the Window
When you’re setting your furniture up in your home office, it can be nice to think of looking out the window at a nice view for inspiration. Unfortunately, in reality, that often turns into staring wistfully outside, wishing you could enjoy the nice weather instead of finishing your quarterly report.
Get rid of temptation by working with your back to the window instead. This prevents you from being distracted by what your kids are doing in the yard or whether or not the sun is still shining. It also has the added benefit of providing you with natural light from behind, which can be easier on your eyes than staring into the light all day.
Tip 2:Put Your Watch Away
Most of the time, having a watch is great, but when you’re on a deadline, watches can actually become a distraction. Why? You constantly check your watch instead of simply focusing on powering through your work. Watches can also be irritating if you wear them while trying to type on your computer or write in a notebook.
Instead, you’re better off having a designated spot to place your watch while you work. If you have a watch that needs movement to stay wound, a WOLF Watch Winder, like the kind sold by Burton Blake, can be a lifesaver. WOLF Watch Winders automatically keep your watches wound so that you can put them back on when you’re done working and feel confident that the time will still be correct.
Tip 3:Keep Deadlines Prominent
We’ve already discussed the fact that a giant window probably shouldn’t be behind your desk. So what should be there?
One of the best choices you can make is putting an extra large white board calendar behind your desk. White board calendars can be erased and reset at the end of each month, but their benefit is that they allow you to see your upcoming due dates in large print. When you’re tempted to YouTube hop instead of finishing your work, looking up to see how many projects you have lined up can be the motivation you need to stay on task.
Tip 4:Keep an Egg Timer On Your Desk
Remember when we said to put your watch away? Watches show large blocks of time and need continual reference throughout the day. Egg timers, on the other hand, are for small blocks of time and—importantly—they audibly tick as they go.
So why should you use an egg timer to increase your productivity at work? The Pomodoro Technique is a great way to keep yourself on task. The concept behind it is to break all of your work into 25-minute timed intervals. Being on a timer keeps you hyper-focused to get your predetermined amount of work done, which means fewer detours to Facebook or Twitter and more time actually being productive.
Tip 5:Keep a Physical Notebook On Your Desk
Because everything can be electronic these days, it’s tempting to go completely paperless in the office. Unfortunately, keeping notes stored on your desktop can be cumbersome, both to do and to check back on. Instead, people who try to work paperless often rely on a lot of memorization to get things done. But the more that you try to keep in your head, task-wise, the less room you have in your head for creativity and productivity.
Keeping a physical notebook on your desk allows you to write down new tasks as soon as they come to you. You can write due-dates next to them and rank their priority in your day without having to spend a lot of time messing with formatting in word or searching for documents. This saves you time both in the short-term and in the long-term.
Staying productive at home is all about setting yourself up for success. Without a boss standing over your shoulder ensuring you’re getting your work done in a timely fashion, you have to be your own boss. That has its benefits and its draw-backs, but as long as you hold yourself to a high standard, you’ll find you can be even more productive at home than in the office.
