Managing Distractions: How to be Productive, Part 2

If you missed yesterday's post, click here.

3.   Leave the House – At least once or twice a week, you should leave the house during working hours. You can either go somewhere to work or you can go take a break. Have lunch with a friend, run an errand, or take your work to a coffee shop and do some stuff there. While there are a lot of distractions outside of the house, they are not your distractions, which can make it easier for some people to concentrate. By getting out of the house for a while, you give your eyes and your brain break. When you get home, it’ll be easier to focus on your work.

4.   Organize Your Day – This probably works best for people who like lists. Take some time at the beginning of the day to take a look at what you need to do. Once you know what you want to accomplish during a day, you need to prioritize what needs to be done first. One of the ways that I do this (I love lists) is to divide the day in half. I try to get as much as possible done before lunch. First, because I am much more productive in the morning, and second, because I tend to run my errands in the afternoon.

In all, you know the things that distract you the most. All you have to do is find the self-discipline to eliminate them.

Managing Distractions: How to be Productive, Part 1

Productivity varies from day to day whether you work in an office or at home. Either way, most people will agree that Mondays are not very productive days. If you work from home, it can be very difficult to be productive because there are so many distractions in your house. You’ve got your TV, your household chores, your errands, and so on. If you have young children or pets, you have even more distractions to contend with while you’re working on blog articles, websites, or transcriptions. (Fortunately, there are only four animals here—no children yet.) Nonetheless, there are things that you can do to make yourself more productive. Having a set schedule is a useful tool, but you also have other tools that you can use.

1.      Create a Workspace – First, you should create a workspace, or a place where you keep all of your work related items. It doesn’t matter where it is in your house as long as it is a place where you can keep your things. You’ll be more productive if you don’t have to run around the house looking for some computer accessory that you need. This is one piece of advice that I have a difficult time with because I like to move around, but I have noticed an increase in productivity when I do sit down at my “desk” to work.

2.      Designating Time for Non-work – When you work at home it is really easy to spend the entire day doing non-work. This can include a myriad of things like housework, browsing the Internet, watching TV and so on. A good way to be productive for the rest of the day is to schedule time for these things. This can be as simple as saying “I can goof off between 8 and 9” or you can give yourself an hour a day to play on the Internet. If you do the majority of the housework, you can set aside thirty minutes to an hour each afternoon to get everything clean. This way you will be able to focus on your work rather than getting distracted. I use a reward system, where I work for a while then I reward myself with some non-work after completing an article or a job.

Tip – Though it might seem a bit juvenile, a kitchen timer is a good way to keep track of your non-work time.

To see tools 3 and 4 click here!