Thriving from Your Home Office: Beating Isolation and Staying Organized

1. Welcome to Mastering Working from Home: Hello. I am Justin Rag, and I'm so excited to introduce you to my course on working from home efficiently. Like many of you, I've struggled to balance productivity, time management, and maintaining a healthy work life balance while working remotely. In today's world, more and more people are finding themselves working from home, which offers incredible freedom and the chance to spend more time with family. However, it also comes with its own set of challenges. In this course, I will share the strategies and tools that have helped me stay productive and focused. We'll explore daily routines that boost motivation, tips for creating a functional and inspiring home office, and techniques to tackle distractions. Together, we'll create a more organized and balanced home work space. Join me on this journey to reclaim control over your workday and achieve more with less stress. Let's get started. 2. Tips for Avoiding procrastination: Five tips for avoiding procrastination. Procrastination is the bane of working from home. If you're someone who works at home regularly, then you absolutely need to learn to avoid the temptation to spend the first hour and a half doing nothing at all. Otherwise, you're suddenly working five hour days instead of eight hour days, and that's something your employers and clients are going to notice. In this presentation, we're going to look at five tips for crushing procrastination. Accountability. The problem is that there is no accountability for procrastination. That is why it is worse for those that work from home versus those that work in an office. In office, people are constantly looking over your shoulder. But at home, you can do whatever you like. One solution is to create stakes for yourself. An easy way to do that, e mail your client and tell them that you're going to finish X amount of work and send it to them daily. Suddenly, the option to set on your thumbs for the first few days on a project is gone. Work in a coffee shop. This won't always be possible depending on your circumstances, but when it is, working in a coffee shop or a library is a great way to add some social pressure to your day. You can't sit playing Sonic the head hop now because people will think, you're odd. Speaking of which, coffee works great as well. Set rewards. Try setting small rewards for yourself for accomplishing set amounts of work each day. For example, if you finish the first 2000 words of an essay you're writing, only then can you give yourself a cup of coffee? Make the project fun. Often, we put things off simply because we don't want to do them. This is why procrastination tends to rear its ugly head more when we're doing particularly dull and dry tasks. The solution is to find a way to make the task more interesting. For example, you might find a way to gamify it, or you may just find a way to add more creativity to the project. Rest properly. Finally, make sure you have some proper downtime and fun during your time off. Often, we procrastinate because there are other things that we want to do. If you never have time to play video games, read books, or browse Facebook, then that will start creeping into your work. Actually enjoy your time off, and you should find that this changes. 3. Productive Work Enviroment: How to create a highly productive work environment in your home office. If you're working from home, you need to think carefully about the environment you're going to be working in. You're now not only responsible for the work you do, but also for your surroundings. This is important seeing as the space you work in can drastically impact your ability to stay focused. Now you have the opportunity to create a space that is perfectly conducive to your working style and that will help you feel inspired, motivated, and comfortable. But too many people will find that the exact opposite thing happens instead. They end up working in squalor and feeling demotivated, cluttered, and distracted as a result. Join me, and we're going to go over how to get this right and create a home office that you can't wait to sit down and to work in. Utmona machine. The utmonia machine is a hypothetical architectural project described in Kel Newport's book, Deep work. Here, Newport explains what the perfect space would be like in order to encourage focus and productivity. One of the key features of this space was a gallery of sorts, including inspiring works and figures. Let's say that you're a writer. This space might include a typewriter owned by a famous writer, a lot of impressive looking books, or a quote from Shakespeare on a plaque. The idea of this is to help put you in the right headspace to help you feel inspired and excited to get to work. Comfort. Another important thing for a home office is comfort. When you're uncomfortable, whether that's because the seat is awkward or the desk is the wrong height, this steals attention away from whatever you're doing. Invest in a comfortable chair, and ergonomic keyboard, and anything else that will improve your comfort. Physiology. Physiological factors play a big part in our mental state. Things like the level of lighting, the amount of background noise, or even the temperature can all impact your mood and well being. Make sure you have precise control over these things. Even smells can affect the release of neurotransmitters that affect and impact your mood. Tools. Of course, the right tools will play a big role in helping you be more productive, as well creating a work zone that will make everything you need easily accessible from your one working spot. 4. Creating a Work From Home Routine: How to create a strict routine when working from home. There are many things you may find you struggle to come to terms with when you start working from home. This is a big shift in the way you work and approach work, and the result is that many people struggle to adapt. One big example is that the responsibility is now very much on you to decide how you wish to work. That means you need to think about how you want your workflow to work, what hours you're going to work, and which tasks you're going to prioritize. In this presentation, we're going to look at how to create a routine that will help you maximize your productivity and get more done. Be strict about downtime. The first tip that many people don't recognize is that it is just as important to be strict about downtime as it is to be strict about your actual work. That's critical because it is during your downtime that you're going to recharge for the day ahead. If you allow your work to creep into the rest of your day, then you're going to find that you end up failing to recharge your batteries properly. Thus, when you do start working, you will find that you have less energy and your mind is in other places. Enjoy flexibility. With that said, it is entirely up to you how and when you work, depending on the nature of your work. In other words, if you're someone who works best in the mornings, then there's no longer anything stopping you from working from 6:00 A.M. To 2:00 P.M. Alternatively, you can work an extra hour and a half every day and then take Fridays off. See what works best for you. Create accountability. Something else to consider is whether you have the ability to force yourself to be productive or whether you need an external form of accountability to make sure that you stay on course. Rather than create false stakes, setting punishments for yourself, et cetera. You can achieve this by changing the way you work with your boss or clients. For example, tell them that you will send in your work every single day. Suddenly, you have no option to procrastinate or to work slowly because they expect to see something at the end of every single working day. This can add a lot of discipline to your working process. 5. Dealing with Loneliness & Isolation: How to do with loneliness and social isolation when working from home. If you have made the decision to work from home, then there is a good chance that you're someone who considers themselves to be an introvert. As such, you are probably more than happy to shut yourself away and to work on things you find rewarding. But even for an introvert, this can sometimes become a little lonely and isolating. Meanwhile, if you're an extrovert who has been forced to work from home through no choice of their own, it can be excruciating. In this presentation, we'll look at how to deal with the loneliness and social isolation that comes from working from home. Find other ways to socialize. The first and most important way to ensure you don't go mad working from home is to try to find other ways to get your stimulation and engagement. For instance, if you're stuck at home with your family, you can take lunch with them in order to make the isolation a little more bearable. In fact, this is a huge upgrade. Instead of being forced to work alongside people, you don't really know all that well, you are now spending time with people you actually love. You can also get on a video call with a friend or a co worker using Zoom or Skype. For group calls, a great app you could use is called House Party, which is available for both IOS and Android devices. Work together on projects. If you're self employed, then finding ways to work with others, especially friends, can make a big difference. Collaborating on a project with someone you work well with is extremely rewarding and it's a fantastic way to strengthen your friendship. Go out. Again, this isn't always possible, but where you can, why not go outside and work? Working from home doesn't have to mean working from home in the literal sense. All it really means is working in a place that's not your office. Why not take your laptop to a cafe and get some work done there, or alternatively, why not work on a park bench and enjoy the son on your face? 6. Dealing with Small Tasks & Preventing Overwhelm: How to do with small tasks and prevent overwhelm. Often, it's not the biggest tasks that create the most stress for us. Big tasks loom over us, but they are simple and easy to understand. Instead, then, it is the smaller tasks that typically leave us stressed and overwhelmed. More specifically, it's when lots of small tasks build up that we can often find ourselves feeling snowed under and unsure of where to start. General advice is to tackle the biggest and most ugly project first in a working day. This is referred to as eating the frog. This is good advice as it means you can focus on providing value and getting work done rather than getting bogged down with administrative tasks. But if it means that you never cross those tasks off, you end up with a building pressure. There are e mails to send, bills to pay, letters to open, broken web pages to fix, and all of this plays constantly on your mind even during your time off. This is what Tim Ferris refers to as an open loop. That is any task that remains incomplete and meanwhile causes you stress and anxiety. So what's the solution? First, we will apply what is known as the 1 minute rule. That rule tells us that if a task takes just 1 minute, then we must complete it then and there. Too often, we put off tasks because we find them stressful. If it means e mailing a client who is traditionally a little grumpy, for instance, then we might put off doing so because we don't want to have to deal with them. But these tasks aren't going to go away. If it takes just 1 minute, then it's going to realistically interrupt your day and prevent you from doing the real work. Just do it. This is a fantastic habit to get into. An exception or caveat to this rule is that you shouldn't let 1 minute task pull you out of your deep work. Switching between tasks takes a lot of mental energy, meaning that productivity is always lost. The solution simply shut off notifications and other distractions to make sure that you will not even know about the tasks until you unplug. Finally, any tasks that take longer than 1 minute should be added to a to do list. You can then set aside a designated time to work through these every day. 7. Entering a Working Flow State: How to enter and stay in a flow state when working from home. Have you ever been working on a project when suddenly you find yourself falling into a perfect rhythm. After facing serious procrastination and resistance, all of that seems to fall away and you find yourself in a perfect state of focus. That's when the real work gets done. Without distractions, you were able to stay on task and plow through what you need to get done. But there's more to it than that. According to psychologists, flow states allow us to perform our very best work on a consistent basis. We can tap into reserves of productivity and even creativity that are normally inaccessible. How do you get into this state? Let's take a look at some strategies and tips that we know to work. Rest. The first tip is to ensure that you start the day in the best way possible. That is to say, you shouldn't be overtired or stressed. Make sure that during your downtime, you rest properly so that you can return to work feeling recharged and effective. Sensory deprivation. Our brain has two attentional networks. There is one that is responsible for our internal directed attention, what we choose to focus on, and one that is dedicated by external cues that grab and hold our attention. In order to stay on task then, you need to block out these things that would normally try to pull you away from work. That means a level of sensory deprivation, which you can often accomplish by listening to music or white noise on headphones. Using a large monitor can also help as this will take up more of your feudal view. Inspiration. What many people don't realize is that their productivity is determined more so by their emotion than by logic. In other words, you will find it easiest to be productive when you actually feel interested in and excited by the work that you're required to do. A great tip is to look at examples of the kind of work you intend to do in order to see how it looks best. Just start. Finally, a last tip is to simply start doing whatever it is you need to do. Don't worry if you don't feel inspiration right away, or if you find yourself resisting your need to work, just plow through and keep going, and eventually, you'll fall into a groove. 8. Perfect Work from Home Morning Routine: The perfect morning routine for a productive working day. What you do, first thing in the morning will set the mood for the entire day to follow. If you have a strong productive start to your day, then you're going to find it much easier to dive straight into work and get lots done. But if you allow procrastination to creep in at this early point, or if you engage in unhealthy habits, then you're going to it's harder to get work done. This becomes doubly important if you're working from home. With no commute, you have every opportunity to take things slow and to forget about things like grooming. This makes a huge difference to your head space going forward and seriously limits how productive you're likely to be as the day progresses. This is why the most productive and successful people in the world all have morning routines. In this presentation, we'll discuss some tips to help you create yours. Be realistic. The first and most important step is to make sure that any morning routine you devise is realistic. What that means is that you shouldn't try to come up with something that is extremely elaborate or lengthy and certainly not to start with. If you've never been able to get up before 7:00 A.M. Then what is the point in including that as part of your morning routine? If you've never stuck at meditation, then claim, you're going to do 30 minutes every morning. It is far better to have a simpler morning routine relying on a few rules, but that you'll actually stick to. Use apps. There are plenty of apps out there such as habit tracking apps that are designed to help you stick to your goals and plans. Try using a few to see if they can help. Some key things to try. With all that said, here are some popular options to include in your morning routine. Exercise. This helps wake you up and encourages good habits. Meditation. Even 5 minutes will let you take control of your day. Minimal screen time. Many people believe they shouldn't look at any electronic devices for at least the first hour after waking up. Time outdoors. Spending some time outside will help set your body clock. Todos. Writing a todos first thing is a great way to stay on top of things you need to accomplish. Try incorporating any of these that resonate with you and see how it changes your productivity during the day that follows. 9. Home Productivity Tools & Apps: The top tools and apps for getting more work done from home. Working from home is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you'll have the freedom to work from the comfort of your own four walls. You can drink as much coffee as you like and you don't have a commute. But on the flip side, you're surrounded by distractions. You can't easily speak to your colleagues and you need to manage your time entirely by yourself. That's where the top apps and gadgets can come in handy for helping you do more. Let's talk about some of the best now. Asana. For managing big projects with the team of collaborators, tools like base camp and Asana are invaluable. Asana will let you create new tasks, assign people, and share updates with collaborators. You can even add attachments as well, and there are apps available for both IOS and Android. Slack. Slack is essentially whats app for teams? Sending an e mail to ask small questions is time consuming and certainly not optimal. Slack exists to let you speak to colleagues as you might do by tapping them on the shoulder in a real office setting. Watch out though, Slack can be a time sing. To dost. If you tend to work solo, then to DS is a similarly indispensable tool. This is a to do app that will let you create tasks for yourself and set reminders. It's available on all major platforms, and there's even an Apple Watch app. The best feature in to DIS is the natural language interpretation. This lets you say things like, take the trash out every Monday, which will then automatically renew on Monday with a due date for that day. Notion. Notion is a note taking app that is significantly more powerful than most of the competition. That's because each note can become a database, a flow chart, or even a page. You can embed images, videos, and even websites, and you can even export your notes as HTML websites. The whole tool is far more like a content management system in terms of what it can do, and many people refer to it as their second brain. Freedom. For those who struggle not to get distracted by the web without a boss breathing over their shoulder, freedom is an app that lets you block specific apps and web pages. That means you can't access Facebook during work hours, which can instantly quadruple your work output. 10. Tips to Enjoy Working from Home: These five hacks will make working from home much more enjoyable. Working from home can be a mixed blessing. For some, this is an ideal way to spend more time in their own environment, to get away from irritating colleagues and to get rid of the commute. For others, this can feel a little bit like being under house arrest. Here are some tips that will help to ensure you fall into the former camp. Adopt flexi time. Depending on your precise work arrangements, working from home probably means you now have the luxury of deciding how and when you wish to work. That means you can get up early and finish at 2:00 P.M. Or you can have the morning off and work into the evening. Mess around with what works best for you. Listen to music. Music can make a huge difference to how long and dull a day feels, and it can also help to keep you focused by blocking out distracting sounds. Invest in some good noise canceling headphones. Watch movies and TV. This might sound counterproductive, but in fact, you can actually watch movies and TV while working at the same time. This is a strategy that Tim Faris has been known to use and that is useful for distracting that more creative part of your brain that doesn't enjoy dull work. The key is to watch something you already know very well and to turn the sound off. This makes it a background distraction that you can gaze at occasionally while typing. It's just enough stimulation to prevent you from getting pulled away from your work. Surround yourself with inspiration. Inspiration is one of the key and most important tools for getting more work done. If you can bring yourself to feel inspired by the work you're doing, then it won't be a struggle to get yourself to start it and to see it through. What can help in this regard then is to surround yourself with things you personally find inspiring. That might mean examples of great works in your field or just images of people who inspire you. Spend time with others. With your office time gone, you might find yourself going a bit mad from the social isolation. A good solution is to spend lunch times with others or to meet up with friends after you finish work. You've traded time with irritating colleagues for time with people you actually love. Remember, it's an upgrade. 11. Tackle the Biggest Task First: Why you should tackle the biggest challenge first? You sit down at your computer, boot it up, and take a look at your to do list. What do you find? Several big projects and a slew of smaller tasks that need doing. And that's before you've even opened your e mails. What do you do? Which projects to get started first? The answer, whichever task is the biggest and most unappealing. This is what is referred to as eating the frog, which in turn comes from a marked twain quote. If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first. Another way to look at this is like so. It's better to have a big project behind you than in front of you. The issue with trying to tackle smaller projects and tasks first is that they have a tendency of building up and running over. If you tackle a long list of to dos, then you're going to find yourself having to take a lot of things off before you even sit down to work. This can leave you exhausted, but it also often means you won't actually have time to accomplish much else come the end of the day. As the day goes on, you also lose will power and energy, meaning that you will tend to spend longer on those bigger projects. There's now a very real threat of it not getting done. Usually, the biggest and most unpleasant task is the one that will provide the most value. This is the one that clients pay the most for or that is most important for your employers. Thus, if you complete this task first, you know that you've accomplished the thing that is the most valuable. You've done the actual work. This is a great tool for building and developing the kind of will power you need to stay productive and self motivated. There is an exception to this rule though, of course. That is when you have something that is urgent to do. If a task has a shorter deadline and it is something you can't push back, then you should complete this first to avoid any trouble. Then the next task will be the biggest and most challenging. Everything else goes on your to do list. 12. 5 Tips For Staying Focused: Now I want to go into five tips for staying focused. Whether you have a big deadline coming up or wrangling up the kids, you'll likely need a lot of focus. Even though focus is a natural challenge to most people, there are easy techniques you can incorporate into your day to help train your brain. Without further ado, let's look at five tips for staying focused. Number one, remove distractions. First things first, start by removing all distractions while you're working. This includes social media, your phone, or pesky coworkers that want to chat. If you don't get rid of distractions from the beginning, it will be more of a challenge to stay focused. In fact, it may even be impossible. Of the distraction, turning off your phone if you're not using it for productivity is probably the most important. Although phones are great for communication, they can easily turn into time wasters. I recommend turning your phone onto Do Not Disturb mode while you're working to help you stay focused. Number two, drink coffee and small doses. There's a reason why so many people like to have a cup of coffee in the morning. It helps waken the body and mind for the day. Instead of drinking a large batch of coffee throughout the day, try drinking coffee and small doses. Studies have found that drinking a little bit of coffee periodically throughout the day improves focus. If you drink too much coffee, however, it will lead to jitters and anxiety. Only drink coffee or some other caffeinated beverage in small doses to stay focused. Number three, set daily goals. Goals are a great way to stay focused on your priorities and tasks for the day. Every morning, try to create a list of the top goals for the day. More so, set goals that are specific and time bound to help you stay on track. You may want to try the SMART goal method. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Incorporating these features into your goals will make them clearer and easier to achieve. Number four, give yourself a break. Another tip for staying focused is to give yourself a break. Whenever you first start learning about mind focusing methods, you'll likely learn about the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique talks about how you should work based on a work and break schedule. Begin by working for 25 minutes straight. When that 25 minutes is up, take a five minute break. After the five minute break, get back to work for 25 minutes again. Repeat this four times. After the fourth working session, take a 20 to 30 minute break and start over again. The point of this technique is to help you stay focused when you're working, but giving your brain time to relax. In other words, it breaks the work up into more manageable chunks. Number five, fuel up. Food is our fuel. If you don't have the proper fuel in your body, it's going to be difficult for you to stay focused and energized. Make sure you're eating the right food throughout the day to keep yourself focused and ready to tackle work. Complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and lean protein are the best foods for staying focused. Some of the best foods to eat throughout the day include berries, leafy vegetables, fatty fish, walnuts, and tear coffee in moderation. Final thoughts, as you can see, improving focus is relatively easy with these five tips. Just be kind with yourself and you should see results in no time. Three. 13. Final Thoughts: Ladies and gentlemen, congratulations on completing this course. By reaching this milestone, you've acquired essential knowledge to efficiently work from home, stay productive, and manage your time while maintaining a healthy work life balance. I hope you found the step by step guidance on structuring your workday, setting up a productive workspace, and using the best tools for the job to be as practical as they are transformative. You learned daily routines that boost productivity and motivation, picked up health and wellness tips to lead to a balanced work from home life. You now have the techniques to optimize your home office and the must have tools and apps for remote collaboration. Throughout this course, you've discovered productivity hacks for tackling tasks efficiently and strategies for staying motivated without office supervision. You've honed the art of creating an inspiring and functional home office and absorb best practices for remote work, tools and technologies. We also discuss maintaining physical and mental well being. Remember, your success lies in consistently applying what you've learned. Working from home does require discipline, but with the knowledge and strategies you now possess, you're well equipped to excel. Thank you for your commitment to this course. I hope it's been as enlightening for you as it was for me to share this information. Here's to your future success and productivity. Well done.