Working from Home

Perks and tips from the trenches

During the Covid Pandemic, more and more businesses sent employees to work from home. A study by Upwork estimates that 1 in 4 Americans over 26% of the American workforce will be working remotely through 2021. They also count that 22% of the workforce (36.2 Million Americans) will work remotely by 2025. (Source https://www.apollotechnical.com/statistics-on-remote-workers/)

One question that has been asked is how you can be productive working from home? A study by Standford of 16,000 workers over nine months found that working from home increases productivity by 13%. (Source: https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statistics/)

1 in 4 Americans over 26% of the American workforce will be working remotely through 2021.

It is hard to argue with statistics that working from home makes you more productive. The only question people have is how you can make it work for your business?

This blog will give you six tips to help you be more productive when working from home.

Let’s cover six tips for being more productive while working at home.

1. Make your work area comfortable and distraction-free

If you are in a place where you can shut the door, that is ideal.

When working from home, we get distracted easily by household chores like cooking, cleaning up, or washing clothes. Hence, it helps to have an area designated only for work.

Wear what makes you most comfortable, but again, it should be clothes that help you concentrate on work instead of reminding you of bedtime. So get out of those pj’s! It may also be good to wear headphones just for background sounds because if there’s no noise around, we tend to make our own (eg. Hearing the sink running and thinking, oh, I should turn it off, then forgetting why we turned it on in the first place).

2. Take breaks

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re at home because there aren’t any time constraints or distractions unless you create them for yourself. So being productive can sometimes mean taking a hiatus from work every hour or so to help refocus your attention. This helps reduce fatigue and improves productivity since you’ll come back prepared and energized after a brief pause instead of having to dig out of slumps all the time.

A study by Standford of 16,000 workers over nine months found that working from home increases productivity by 13%.

3. Minimize distractions around you

This is also applicable when working outside your home since you’ll be more productive when fewer distractions are going on around you.

Your smartphone and laptop should be in Do Not Disturb mode or at least put aside in another room so that they will only interrupt you if necessary. The Internet is a beautiful thing and provides an infinite amount of distraction; therefore, it would also help block out your time online so that you can focus on work, which will translate into being able to finish tasks faster and with better results.

4. Organize your day

Organizing your day allows you to plan ahead instead of working reactively, leading to more productivity because now, the way you manage your time determines how much work you can get done and what results from it will get compared to moments where you don’t take the time to plan and go with the flow which usually results in a disorganized mess.

After all, you’re working towards an end goal instead of wandering through your day or scrambling at the last minute to finish for a deadline.

5. Work on projects in batches

When working from home, it’s easy to get distracted by wild tangents meaning that you won’t get any real work done. Batching your time together helps eliminate distractions because now, you’ll have more focus on one task at a time instead of doing five things at once and not finishing anything leading to procrastination and zero results.

Doing too many tasks at once leads to multitasking which is usually why some tasks take longer than what was initially anticipated, especially if we are having trouble keeping track of everything that needs to be done. Multitasking may also lead to errors since our brain can only handle so much information before becoming overloaded or forgetting what exactly needs to be completed making quality suffer even further. If there isn’t much to do, then knock out as much work that you can so that you’ll be working on more than one project at a time.

6. Break it down into smaller chunks

When trying to get things done quickly and effectively, breaking your tasks down into smaller segments is a great way to go. Each task will appear less daunting and more manageable, which makes it easier for us to do instead of putting them off until later or procrastinating altogether, which isn’t going to help us get anything accomplished faster.

Besides being more productive, there are more perks to remote workers. Benefits of working from home:

1. Save time from commuting

A survey by Owl labs Remote workers saves on average 40 minutes daily from commuting. But, as someone who has seen Los Angeles traffic, I can tell you that it can be much higher!

Living in Los Angeles, the average daily commute for all workers is approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes each way! That’s over 5 hours every day, equating to almost three weeks a year in lost productivity. I believe that remote work will continue to grow as it becomes more common and accepted.

Remote workers saves on average 40 minutes daily from commuting.

2. Save money on gas and commuting expenses

In addition to saving time, remote workers also save money. Gas prices fluctuate, but currently, gas costs an average of $3 per gallon. Over a year at 40 miles per week and 52 weeks a year, that’s roughly 1,664 gallons or $4144 on gas! This is not including your car payment or repair costs for when you inevitably get into an accident. The numbers are pretty staggering as commuting by car is extremely expensive, especially if you have a long commute (i.e., more than 15 minutes).

There are also costs associated with eating out, buying coffee, and purchasing work attire. All of these things can add up. However, you can save hundreds if not thousands a year by simply working from home, not to mention the tax benefits for remote work. That’s right! Remote workers are entitled to some tax breaks.

Tax breaks can include:

• Home office deduction
• Healthcare expenses
• Pass-through deduction
• Retirement contributions
• Depreciation of equipment

Be sure to speak with your accountant or tax professional for more details.

3. Have a better work-life balance

Working from home has been an incredible game-changer because it allows me to completely control my schedule, which is sometimes tricky when working in the corporate world. So, for example, now when I see that there is something planned with friends or family, I make sure to leave work early so that I don’t feel rushed instead of feeling like, ‘if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to go.

I have always been a fast worker, so I can get more done in a flexible environment. While not all companies will give you this flexibility in your schedule, now more than ever, many do try, especially knowing that many parents have had to stay home and educate their children plus work during shutdowns during the pandemic.

So as you can see, working remotely has benefits both for the employee and the employer. Often remote workers tend to be much more loyal as they have worked hard to get their position in a rare company with day laborers, so your retention rates will also go up.

Remote work can and should be a win-win for companies and employees alike, and since more and more people are demanding work-from-home arrangments post-pandemic, this “new” way of working may just become the norm. So don’t be afraid to work from home. Just set yourself up for success, follow my steps for being more productive, and reap the rewards. After all, who doesn’t want to save time and money?