How to stay productive when you're working from home - my top 5 tips

Ah, that old chestnut - I've been in this game for a few years now, so I'm a bit of an expert. You won't find me getting distracted by the contents of the world wide web, or the dog/cat, or household chores, or my phone... No. Noooo. Not me. Ahem.

OK, so you may be surprised to hear I'm not super-human when it comes to knuckling down - although I do think I'm not all that bad really. Of course, doing a job you enjoy helps, but even then there's still a lot of things you don't want to do/can't be bothered with that leads to all sorts of prevarication and distraction. And sometimes, even knowing it's something you HAVE to do RIGHT NOW doesn't even help give the proverbial kick up the bum you need to get productive.

So, what to do, what to do? Here's a few little tips I've found work for me over the years - hopefully they might prove useful to you too.

The sound of silence...

I hate it, can't work in silence, never have. You may not be the same, but if you find quiet distracting then my tip is to put on the radio (not the TV, never ever the TV!). Personally I listen to Radio 4 all day long while I'm working, plus occasional podcasts when I know I can listen (because most of the time I'm not actually listening, it's there just rumbling in the background in a comforting kind of way). It reminds me there are other people working out there in the world too. Which leads me onto...

Body-doubling...

If you find working at home completely on your own is hard, and background noise from a radio for example doesn’t work, sometimes just having another person present in the room is enough to spur you on. So maybe work in a coffee shop or library for a couple of hours a day.

It's all about timing...

When are you most productive? If you're sitting down at your desk at 9am on the dot and expecting to find the creative juices flowing when you don't actually hit your creative sweet spot until after lunch, then you're on a road to nowhere. Plan your day around when your brain is feeling it. Use the non-creative time to do the mundane stuff. I personally find I can't knuckle down until I've sorted out my emails and done the admin stuff. It frees my mind, knowing that it's all organised and now I can relax and do the productive, creative things I need to do.

Finding your place…

Make sure that the area you work in is comfy, well lit, and YOURS (at the very least, for the time you need to be working at it). And make your area attractive: a nice plant or a fancy pot to put your pens in is sometimes enough - but don’t try to work amongst clutter or housework that needs doing, it messes with your head, your creativity, and it’s super-distracting (as in: “I’ll just tidy up before I get onto to those emails..”)! Get those urgent chores done before you even sit down to start your work day. Equally, unplugging from social media can help you to keep productive - we all know how much of a glorious timewaster it can be! Turn off the notifications so there are no pop-ups trying to lure you back in.

Plan your day…

I find having a scatter-gun approach to work can be really distracting; where you simply react to things as they happen. I know I work much more productively if I can allot sections of my day to certain tasks. As I’ve said, I start my day by going through emails because it also gives me an idea of what needs to be done that day so that I can prioritise. I try to tackle any jobs that I don’t want to do first rather than leave them to later in the day - this includes anything that’s boring, difficult (because I know it will play on my mind all day if I don’t do it early on), or annoying. Take regular breaks during the day, making sure you actually get up off your chair and move. I don’t have set times for this because it’s not always possible to do, but even just getting up to make a cuppa and stare out of the window while the kettle boils is enough to give your brain some downtime and be able to go back refreshed.

It can often feel as if productive, efficient people must be some kind of robot - but they’re just people that have found their workflow: and you can too!

Sarah x

Top 5 tips for working from home

Thousands of people across the country (and the world) are finding themselves working from home now. Whilst this is temporary and life will be back to normal after coronavirus (honestly, it will, this will pass), it can be really hard to adapt to working in a home environment, especially when you’re sharing it with the whole family and you can’t just get up and leave the house to get away from it all - and even more so when it wasn't planned!

I’ve been working from home for about 11 years now and I know from experience how hard it can be to stay focussed and productive. So I want to give you some really practical home working tips that, through trial and error, I’ve worked out and realised over the years in the hope that they might help you too… you can survive working from home, trust me!

Your work area: If you have the space, establish a work area - whether it’s a proper desk, the dining room table, a piece of board over your lap Roald-Dahl-style, whatever. That way you can walk away from it (or commute, if you will!). It’s important to be able to get work out from under your nose at the end of the day. If you can’t physically shut a door on the room you work in, make sure you clear and tidy your work area at the end of every day. Even if that just means stacking paperwork into neat piles, putting the lid of your laptop down and putting your pens in a pot, it will make it feel less intrusive when you walk past it during your days off or evenings, and it’ll make everything feel more controlled (in an already chaotic time). Working from home is all about creating divides between work-life and home-life. That’s easy to achieve when you work in a different building, but you have to consciously make the effort when you work from home - otherwise home and work can blend and you’ll never be able to switch off properly. At a time like this, when we can’t just go out whenever we want, that’s more important than ever.

Get yourself comfortable: Make sure you’re working in enough light - whether that’s natural light (ideally) or an improvised table lamp. If you find yourself frowning or working in your own shadow because the window is behind you, that’s far from ideal. You might be improvising with a dining chair that’s not the right height, so if that’s the case make sure you sit up straight (I’m world class at hunching over my desk, so I know how easy it is to end up with backache and a stiff neck at the end of the day!). Stand up and walk around the room at regular intervals. And don’t make yourself too comfy: whilst it might be tempting to put the coffee machine on the table next to you, it’s better to keep it where it is so that you’re forced to get up and move to get yourself a drink! But remember, chances are you’re going to be working from home like this for a few weeks, so make yourself comfortable and create an environment that’s as pleasing to work in as you can.

Keep to regular hours: If you’ve got very young children or others in your home that need attention I know this can be really hard. When I first started PhotoFairytales I worked from the kitchen table and my daughter Amy was very little. Even little things like her interrupting me to ask for a biscuit would cut through my concentration and it would take time to get ‘back in the zone’. If your children are old enough to understand and cooperate, try working in hourly chunks that mimic their own school routine. At the end of each hour you make yourself available - and maybe even have a 15 minute ‘playtime’ with them. That way they have a routine, the same as you. You might find yourself getting up a bit earlier to do some work before they wake up, or working later after their bed time - but just make sure you’re not tempted to dip in and out of work when you shouldn’t be. Turn your phone off, turn the laptop off, make yourself step away when you’re ‘out of hours’. When you go out to work there are structures to your day: the commute, the lunch hour, the clocking off time. But when you work from home those things can get blurred. You might not be able to stick to the same hours as usual, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit of routine (having a proper lunch hour is a good place to start). Maybe think about setting an alarm on your phone to remind you when to ‘go home’ at the end of the day: bzzz bzzz, home time!

Happiness is still important: Bring in a bit of what my Amy calls ‘the aesthetics’… put a nice plant by your workspace, get yourself some nice pens to write with, a pretty pot to put them in, a nice ‘work’ mug. Whatever little touches you can add that makes the environment more pleasant to work in. Chances are you’re going to be working from home for a few weeks, so you may as well make the best of things.

Dress the part: It’s so easy to just work in your pyjamas - or even get so engrossed in work you forget to brush your hair or teeth (I’m speaking from experience here, trust me on this). So, every morning make sure you get dressed just as you would if you were going to work (I mean, you don’t have to do the full shirt-and-tie-power-suit thing, but dress like someone might be coming round to the house and you wouldn't want to be caught on the hop). It sounds crazy, but the act of getting properly dressed makes you feel like you’re going to work. And it means that in your downtimes like the weekends and evenings you can still get that relaxed feeling. For example, I work from home but I never wear slippers during the day. I have a pair of shoes that I never wear outdoors, but they feel like shoes and that makes me feel different - and act different - during the day. They’re less comfy - so at the end of the day when I’ve finished work I take them off and put my slippers on - and that’s my sub-conscious indicator that tells my brain it’s now relaxing time! (I’m confessing all my secrets here, you do realise that?!)

Bonus tip: This one is all about distractions… How houseproud are you? Do you make the beds every day? Keep the carpets hoovered?  Keep things basically tidy at home? If not, you might want to get on top of things a bit. It’s hard to keep focussed when out of the corner of your eye there’s a pile of dirty plates in the sink. So every day, allot 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening to do a swift tidy. Make the beds, do a sweep of the rooms and pick up anything that doesn’t belong - even if that just means chucking stuff in a box until later, just get it out of sight. I’m not suggesting you do a full clean of your house, just a straighten up. Rope in other family members and get them to pull their weight too. It’s easy to get distracted by housework when you’re supposed to be working - personally, I find the washing is the main culprit for this: I’ll find myself dashing to the washing machine to get the next load on, or get it pegged in the garden while the sun’s shining. That’s fine, it gives me a reason to step away from my studio and straighten up and switch my focus - but I draw the line at shoving the hoover around when I should be answering emails. That sort of thing can wait - when I’m at work, I’m at work. You’re spending a lot of time in your home right now so keep it organised, delegate chores if you can, only do housework during out-of-hours - a tidy home is a tidy mind!

Also, does your phone constantly ping and buzz with notifications from social media? These might be a nice distraction normally, and you might have a routine of checking your Instagram or Facebook account during your lunch break, but they can cut across your concentration if you’ve got your phone beside you because you’re working from home.  Think about switching it off or muting the notifications - you’ve probably got enough distraction going on in your home with kids and partners interrupting you, so you don’t want to add to it with notifications that an old school friend has just seen a squirrel in their garden (or whatever)!

Above all though, remember this isn’t going to be forever. It’s a strange moment in time that we’ll all remember, but it will become a memory and life will go on.

Stay in, stay safe.

Sarah x

What I love this week...

Even the screen cycles through soothing colours....

When I'm sitting hunched and round shouldered straight-backed and posture-perfect at my desk, one of the things that keeps me company (apart from the dog at my feet) is the radio. I've never been able to work in silence - as a child doing my homework I always had to have Scooby Doo/Blue Peter/Rentaghost on in the background...

Music radio is too intrusive I find - plus I nearly always end up with an unwanted earworm while laying in bed at night. So my background noise of choice is talk radio; something I can mentally tune in and out of without too much effort. And the channel I normally choose is Radio 4 (which is, I think, both slightly farty and cool at the same time).

But... I've discovered something this week which has actually worked just as well (and hasn't involved my listening to The Archers tum-tee-tum-te-tum-te-tum, or Gardener's Question Time discussing plum rot, or Woman's Hour talking about the menopause - all of which are very entertaining of course, but sometimes you need a bit of variety eh?!). No, I'm tuning into www.noisli.com - and I love it!

You can control your own soothing background sounds - the pitter patter of raindrops and the wind rustling in the leaves... or tweety birds and the sound of a nearby stream... or a cosy crackling fire with a rumbling thunderstorm. In fact you could have all of those at the same time if you want - and the sound of waves on the sea, crickets chirping at night, and the ambient sound of a coffee shop thrown in too. If you really want!

You can adjust the levels, sending that thunder into the background or bringing up the noise of the rain - tweaking it to your hearts content. Or you can put it on 'random' and it'll cycle through sounds for you.

I had it set on 'thunder-rain-crackling fire' yesterday afternoon which was lovely and cosy (for the middle of July). And right now I'm listening to a forest filled with birds and a gentle breeze. Ahhhh.....and reeeelax.

There, that's my little gift to you for today - enjoy :)

Sarah x

The Top Ten Lists you SHOULD be writing...

I do like a good list - one full of things I can tick off. With ‘TO DO!!’ written across the top, numbers down the side, and a fair few slightly cheaty easily tick-offable things on there (think, ‘brush teeth’ or ‘post letters’). 

Sometimes though these lists can become a bit of a millstone around your neck. There often seems to be things on those lists that stay there longer than they should because you (let’s be honest) don’t really want to face them. So with this in mind I thought I’d write a list of potential lists that would be a pleasure to complete. Something a bit less ‘grind’ and a bit more ‘raise the spirits’!:

1. Places you have been that you loved, and places that you wish you could go

2. The best bits of the particular season we’re in right now

3. People who make you laugh and people who love you

4. Things that you would love to do if money was no object

5. The jobs you said you wanted to do when you were a child

6. The cutest/funniest things your children have ever said

7. Qualities of yourself and your life that you like and feel proud of

8. The ultimate dinner party guest list (they can be alive, dead, or mythical - doesn’t matter)

9. How you would spend a day if you had absolutely nothing to do

10. Acts of kindness that you have done in the past

There, aren’t those lists more fun than the ‘clean oven and bath dog’ kind?!

Sarah :)

The Curse of the Multi-tasker!

Picture the scene: I'm having a relaxing bath trying to unwind my back and chill a bit... I've got my feet raised up on the taps as I've just finished painting my nails (multi-tasking) and I'm reading a great book about how to dominate the world of Google (multi-multi-tasking) - oh, and I have a note pad beside the bath for when I have a genius idea or something I need to remember to do later (that'll be multi-multi-multi-tasking then). Add into the mix the fact that Amy has now bustled in and wants to brush her teeth and I'm telling her not to forget "the ones at the back" and suddenly I don't feel as if I'm all that relaxed really. In fact, I feel like it's now starting to feel damn inconvenient that I'm lying in water and I need to get out and start DOING THINGS...

So, that is my curse: I can't stop mult-tasking. For example, while I'm typing this I keep stopping to check my emails and I'm on Twitter. I've made my computer crash twice this morning because while it was loading something I wanted to use the time it took for me to wait by trying to open two other programmes. I think my computer is a man - he can't multi-task at all!! I shall name him "Keith"...

Is multi-tasking a bad thing? Does it stop me from being able to knuckle down and get things done? Or does it actually mean that I'm squeezing every available minute out of my day, and keeping the massive work/home ball rolling along?

I think it does help me to be more efficient (most of the time), but I don't think it does much for my sanity sometimes. I think I need to write "Daydream more..." on my To Do List.

So, if you find yourself brushing your teeth with one hand and cleaning the sink with the other, whilst mentally planning your day and keeping an eye on the clock - join the club, you are very, very welcome! (Mind you, wasn't it one of the Marks Brothers who said "I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member"?!)

And my toes look lovely by the way: I've gone for a dark blue this time...

Sarah x