Working in a home office may seem like the perfect dream job. I have been doing it for years, and let me tell you, it can be, but it can also turn into something that you really hate too. A home office is a great way to start off your business as an entrepreneur; it definitely has a lot of benefits to it, but there are also downsides. One of which, and trust me when I say this, is the problem with staying focused on the tasks at hand.
How to stay focused in a home office? To stay focused in your home office, you need to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a good work-life balance. A home office should provide the necessary privacy. Different distractions like social media, unexpected meetings, guests, and events can have an adverse effect on your ability to focus and should be avoided.
Working in a home office can bring your business life and personal life together, mix them up, and leave you with one enormous mess. Below I share with you all the tips and tricks I have learned, used, and experimented with while working in my home office.
1. Do Not Have Your Smartphone Close to You
Right off the bat I would like to start with something that is very counter-intuitive but not counterproductive.
Your smartphone can ruin your focus. In fact, the mere presence of the phone in your home office can lead to a drastic drop in performance and focus.
We, as people, do not have endless amounts of focus and attention. And today, many of us can get “addicted” to their phone. This manifests itself as a very subtle, even subconscious nagging to check your phone.
Smartphones keep us constantly connected to friends and family, but also news, information, entertainment, events, and the list goes on and on.
Although this may be viewed as a nice thing in your leisure time or when you want to wind down after a long day, it is very detrimental to your focus while working. Smartphones will draw parts of your energy and focus. This has been the conclusion from a study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.
2. Do Not Multitask
Multitasking is a thing of the past. A fallacy that has been proven not to work. Even worse, it can ruin work productivity.
When multitasking, your brain is not working on two, three, or more things simultaneously, instead it is jumping back and forth between the different tasks.
This can ultimately reduce not just your performance but your focus, cognitive processes, ability to switch between tasks, ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, and so much more.
This is especially true when working in your home office, where multiple distractions and tasks are eagerly begging for your attention. An excellent way to go about all this is to group similar tasks and do them in batches.
3. Have a Dedicated Home Office Space
What you want is to have a dedicated working space where you can get the needed privacy to work. Having a space that you associate with work is beneficial to your focus and ability to get in the zone.
It is very hard to get in a working mood if you are in your kitchen or living room, which you, even subconsciously, associate with other activities.
4. Leave the Social Media Behind
Social media has been associated with a lot of adverse effects. It affects the way we think, behave, and our ability to focus.
I have found that because of social media a lot of people have difficulty focusing during their work and studies. It is like an addiction that does not go away.
Social media has also been linked to higher levels of depression, stress, and anxiety.
And social media is one of the leading reasons why people waste time on a daily basis. This is detrimental to your ability to focus and be productive, especially when you are working from home, and there may not be any bosses around.
5. Treat Your Work as a Business
Working from home can easily give us a false sense that we have more of a leeway. After all, we are working in a more relaxed environment compared to working in a real office with many other office workers.
This can ruin any startup or business venture as it will lead to low effort, productivity, and focus. The different environment can easily distract you from your real goal and what you need to be working on.
So make sure to treat your venture as a real business and not a home side project.
6. Schedule Your Time
Schedule your time. This applies to both day-to-day and long-term tasks depending on your line of work.
Take a few minutes each day to plan ahead. or better yet at the end of each day plan your next day. This will help you stay on track and be more focused as you will avoid uncertainties and distractions.
Have a long-term plan as well. While working in your home office, it can be very easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and get distracted by irrelevant things.
Even if you are not the type of person that enjoys schedules, you need it to stay organized and focused on the tasks at hand.
I was struggling with that a lot until I started scheduling my work time.
7. Avoid Overworking Yourself
Scheduling also involves the time you clock out. And there needs to be a point in time when you do clock out.
When you have a home office, it is easy for the lines between your professional life and personal life to blend.
This is going to be overall more detrimental to your focus and performance in the long term. It will take you more effort to get back in the zone each time, and you may be less focused during this time.
This freedom to work anytime you want can easily lead to feeling overworked and exhausted, which then leads to an inability to focus and concentrate.
8. When Possible Do Not Use Your Computer
This was something very peculiar that I noticed while I was a student. If you have to take notes, when possible, take them by hand instead of typing them on your laptop.
Laptops are convenient multipurpose devices that make the student’s life a lot easier. But that comes with a very important caveat that was discovered by a review of three studies published in the SAGE Journals.
It was found that taking notes on a laptop is ineffective compared to writing them down longhand. Keep a notebook near you. Write down everything important to you. The chances are you will be more focused and remember it better.
9. Remember to Exercise
“But what does exercise have to do with staying focused in my home office?” you might say. My answer would be, “A lot!”
Exercise has been linked with better memory and improved concentration and focus.
One study found that just 20 minutes of physical activity was enough to improve the attention span of Dutch students.
Another study found that students who exercised after school showed improvements in their cognitive performance and abilities.
And a third study has linked doing as little as 10 minutes of low-intensity coordinative exercises, like bouncing and throwing a ball may be enough to boost your ability to concentrate and focus.
10. Have Frequent Breaks
Earlier I mentioned that you need to schedule your work. However, do not forget to schedule your breaks. Breaks are essential for more than one reason, but more importantly, you will have some time to unwind.
Working from the comfort of your home can be great, and you can easily work for several hours without even realizing you never took a single break the whole time.
Overworking yourself is going to be one of the most detrimental things to your focus. Avoid it.
I used to be like this. I can sit and work for 5, 6, even 8 hours straight and then feel mentally exhausted, unable to concentrate at anything.
One study even showed that the focus and concentration levels of people who do not take breaks drop with time.
When you are having a break, relax. Whatever you have been doing up to this point, now can wait.
You need your breaks to lower the amount of mental fatigue. Many people have found that by having more frequent breaks, they can actually pump out more work.
However, taking too many breaks or too long breaks can also be detrimental to your ability to refocus and get back in the flow.
11. Consider Playing Background Music
The right type of music will be mostly up to your personal preference. However, one study found that classical music that has a “happier” feel to it produces a better effect on creativity.
Even a simple change to your working environment in your home office like this one can be beneficial and potentially allow you to stay focused for longer.
Even a TV running in the background can be very soothing and improve your focus and work performance.
12. Dress Appropriately
Working from home has one huge benefit to it; you do not necessarily need to wear any professional clothing or formal suits, shirts, and dresses.
However, going to the other extreme and working in your pajamas may be detrimental to your focus. The problem is that you want to get in that working mindset.
Believe it or not, the way you dress will affect the way you feel and how you perceive yourself.
Of course, I am not saying you need to have a dedicated three-piece suit just for your home office. Just something fairly formal or casual will do just as well. A simple change in your wardrobe like this can help you perceive yourself more professionally and maintain better focus.
13. Fine-Tune Your Work Processes
This may be difficult at first, but the more you work in your home office, the better you will be at pointing out the little distractions and things that ruin your focus.
This is when you need to start thinking about automating some processes or even delegating parts of your work to third parties. Being able to lower the number of things you need to worry about is going to allow you to focus more on the important things at hand. It can even boost your creativity.
Tim Ferris talks about this a lot in his book “The 4-Hour Workweek”, which is a great and easy-to-read book.
14. Decide What Your Boundaries Are
This is a huge aspect of working from a home office, and it needs your attention.
If you are working, this is not the time for friends or family meetings. If you want to be genuinely focused on the tasks at hand, you need to do it the same way you would do it if you were working at a company’s office that was located somewhere away from your home.
Of course, this does not mean you cannot help your friends, relatives, and family in case there is an emergency. This is one of the neat things about having a home office. However, this should not be something you do every single day.
This also applies to other tasks like household chores, doing the groceries, and more. It may be very tempting to cook some food, do the laundry, or clean the oven in your breaks, but be careful with that as it may distract you too much. At the back of your mind, you will constantly be thinking about these chores, and this can lower your focus.
15. Keep Your Home Office Organized
Keep your home office well-organized and clutter-free. Invest in some filing cabinets, or software if necessary
A cleaner environment will provide fewer distractions and will allow you to stay concentrated for a longer time.
16. Find Your Most Productive Hours of the Day
No matter how much I say about this, I will not be able to do this subject justice.
It takes some doing, data collection, and sorting out, but it is well worth it.
Find when they are and work during your most productive hours of the day.
These hours can vary from person to person, I realized, but these hours are when your productivity, ability to focus, and concentrate are at their fullest.
You may have the best home office possible but work during the wrong time, and you will have to deal with low productivity and fleeing focus.
For most people, the most productive hours are generally between 8 am to 3 pm. Incidentally, around 11 am to 11:30 am is when most people reach their peak performance.
17. Create the Right Working Environment
Granted, you can fit a small desk in the corner of your living room where you can work and call it a dedicated working space, but that may not cut it.
In fact, it usually won’t.
The thing is you need to invest in your home office. You need to make sure you have all the equipment you need and that it is arranged in such a way that it will not negatively impact your workflow.
This applies to the quality and reliability of your equipment and the comfort and quality of your furniture.
Are you working in a chair that promotes back pain after just half an hour of sitting in it? This will not only ruin your concentration but your productivity and, well, your health.
18. Do Not Forget to Socialize
This point may be more relevant to people that both live alone and work from their homes.
Working from your home office can easily lead to isolation. Something that I, myself, have experienced.
Chronic loneliness can lead to a wide variety of different health problems. It can even lead to a reduction in your ability to focus, concentrate, solve problems, and so much more.
Humans are, without a shadow of a doubt, social creatures. And isolation is detrimental to our health. This is such a hazard that some governments are even taking steps in combating it. For example, in the UK, there is a minister of loneliness.
19. Use Your Equipment Properly
The next thing I would recommend is to have dedicated work equipment. When you start associating it with work-related tasks only, you will be able to stay more focused and stay away from the distractions.
Alternatively, I would suggest using different browsers on your computer.
One you can use for your everyday browsing, chatting, watching videos, etc. and another for work-related things. When you are doing work, you can have only your work-related browser on and in your free time the other.
20. Create a Routine
Establishing a clearly defined routine will help you easily to get in the zone and maintain your focus. Humans are creatures of habit.
People like their morning coffee or late-night show.
And what happens when that routinely done activity does not occur for some reason?
At the very least we get a little upset. But this goes to show how well we can get accustomed to something.
This is why it is always recommended to have a routine. For example, you can have a small morning routine that ends with you starting to work.
Related Questions
Is working from home possible? Working from home is possible. Many companies hire people remotely. For example, it is possible to work from your home as a customer service representative, freelance writer, programmer, or editor.
Where should your home office be located? The best places for a home office to be located are rooms that provide privacy. Separate unused rooms or re-purposed garages are ideal for a dedicated home office while kitchens and living rooms are not a good place for a home office.