5 Tips for Staying Motivated in Your New Home Office

Five Tips to Stay Productive in Your New Home Office

With millions of people working from home, you’ve undoubtedly found it can be a challenge staying productive, but I’ve found that doing these five things are helping keep me on track with our day to day at Lonicera Investments.

Get Dressed for Work

Get dressed!? Isn’t this one of the benefits of working from home? One could certainly argue that working in sweatpants and a stained t-shirt is the way to go, but not for me. Like many others, working from home is new. The first couple days, I thought working in lounge-wear was something that would be beneficial, but I think it just made me lazy. I didn’t have the drive to get moving like I normally do; it was almost like I was working on a weekend. I decided I needed to change something. The most practical first step was to treat my home office, like it was my real office; I resumed my usual routine. Two cups of coffee while watching the news and reading Business First, shower, get dressed, and kiss my wife and daughter goodbye. Then I retreated to the basement, where my new home office is set up. Staying with my regular morning routine is proving to help my productivity and helps put me in my normal working mindset. 

Set Up Away from Distractions

While laying on the couch with your laptop and Netflix or Hulu streaming in the background sounds nice, it wasn’t ideal for productivity the first couple days of working from home. My new office is set up in our basement away from distraction. Don’t get me wrong, I love being around my wife and daughter, but my job requires my full attention. Keeping my headphones in while listening to music, won’t keep my sweet daughter, Lily, from crawling over to me and pulling herself up. When that happens, I have no choice but to immediately stop what I’m doing and give her all my attention! Although, I wish I had the discipline to keep my head down, for me, I need to be alone to concentrate and do my best work.

Take Walks

A new part of my routine has been to take daily walks at noon. This is where I get my mental break and spend some time with the family. I don’t know about you, but if you’ve been taking more walks since we’ve all been working from home, it seems like the bike paths and sidewalks are much more crowded. Seeing all my neighbors getting out and about has been refreshing. 

Create Daily Goals

Maybe you already do this; I normally have a list of weekly goals I need to accomplish. Since I moved my office, I’ve found that my attention can drift easier, so I started writing down daily goals. It’s something that is helping keep my concentration and motivation as high as it would be at the office.

Have an Accountability Partner

Each morning my business partner and I have a call to discuss our daily goals and what we accomplished the day before. If we didn’t finish the tasks, we said we would, an explanation is due. Competitive people will understand that in an office environment, it can be easier to stay motivated when you see people around you hard at work. Having this morning call with my business partner is helping sustain my production.

Hopefully these tips help you stay productive while working from home! Good luck and stay healthy.