How to Stay Focused and Productive from Home

Studying or working from home can be a dream. Or a nightmare. It all depends on you and how you manage your time. As I've been working from home (or from a beach) for the past 5 years, I can now share what I've learnt from my own experience.

Let's be honest, there are a lot of benefits and positive thing to being able to take classes online or working remotely at home. Less traffic, less pollution, less stress, more time. You can even improve your relationship, be more present for your kids and save money. A lot of money in fact.

1 . Create Your Happy Place

Even if you live in a tiny place, it's really important to create a dedicated space for your study or work. Clear your desk or kitchen table and make space for your laptop and a notepad/books. If you have flatmates or a partner, make sure to clarify that you are busy and you shouldn't be disturbed. You can also put your headphones on and tell your flatmates that that should work as a Do Not Disturb sign.

Organized Blogger Workstation — Photo by Arnel Hasanovic / Unsplash

2. Take breaks

The best times to charge up are between 10 a.m. and noon, and between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. This goes for coffee or your caffeine of choice. Why not early in the morning? The body naturally produces cortisol in the morning, which helps us to wake up. Caffeine messes with our cortisol production, making us MORE dependent on caffeine.

3. Learn the Bullet Journal Method to get s**t done

I promise, I have tried all sorts of productivity apps and methods, but nothing really worked for me. Until I stumbled upon this very simple, very useful method: the bullet journal method. Learn the basics here.

4. Switch off all your notifications

This is probably the most important tip I can share with you. Since our concentration is very low nowadays, it's important we help it in all way possible, like avoiding digital and social media distractions. Putting your phone on silent and activating the Do not disturb function, it's probably the greatest favour you can do to yourself.

Young man holding phone in his hands at a desk. There are notifications on screen. Picture taken by Jonas Leupe (www.brandstof.studio) for Tandem Tech (www.tandemtech.be) — Photo by Jonas Leupe / Unsplash

5. Create a schedule around your day

Let's not forget that even if you work or study remotely, you also have to clean, cook, shop and care for your kids if you have them. The ability to create effective routines around your responsibilities is half of your job. You can start with a weekly schedule to have an overview of your appointments, exams, calls and so on. For example, if you know you need to do grocery shopping, you can get it out of the way as first thing on Monday morning so that you don't have to think about it for the rest of the week. The same goes for other appointments, try and group them so you can clear your daily schedule of interruptions.

📸 @mariogogh — Photo by Startaê Team / Unsplash

6. Plan your days and weeks.

An important part of creating a schedule is to sit down and actually lay it out, not try and wing it. Once during the end of the week, sit down and look at the next week’s schedule and tasks. You can take that opportunity to remind yourself about upcoming meetings, appointments, deadlines, and more. Then you’ll know how to prioritize each of the days of that week. At the end of your work day, look toward tomorrow to see what tasks you need to accomplish and create your schedule to prepared for what’s ahead. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to waste any time trying to figure out what the day holds, you’ll already be ready