Last year, working from home might have sounded like a dream come true for workers who wanted more flexibility, less micro-managing, and fewer interruptions. Working from home means no more morning and evening commutes in rush hour traffic and a better chance of achieving a good work/life balance.

Now, working from home is the forced reality for so many people under lockdown at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Whether we want to or not, we’re required to learn new skills to perform our jobs remotely and continue to be productive.

Without a proper workplace and a prioritized work schedule, working from home can go badly pretty fast. Here are some tips to be productive while working from home.

Don’t do home tasks during work

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The biggest challenge of working from home is balancing the tasks related to your work and the chores that need to be done around the house.

Your environment at home has many distractions, especially if you have children or pets. Some distractions include doing laundry, tidying up, or even watching TV. To avoid these distractions, you need to create a distinct separation in your schedule between your work time and your home time, to make sure you are not doing home tasks during work.

Besides scheduling time to do your chores outside of work hours, having a separate work space that is associated with only work can help you avoid these time-sucking activities during work hours.

Create a separate work space

Having a proper workspace inside your home is important in order to stay on track and get things done. It might be tempting to do work in the kitchen or in front of the television but these places are prone to distractions.

If possible, choose a place that is a separate room and make it a dedicated workspace. This way, you can close the door during work hours to keep your family or roommates out, and have some privacy on calls. This could mean setting up a table in the bedroom or guest room while your partner works in the office or the dining room.

In these times, you may have multiple people working from home at once. If you don’t have enough space to dedicate different rooms to work in, make sure you are at least creating a workspace for your attention. If the only place you and your roommate have to sit down and work is the kitchen, you can create separate workspaces there.

The most important function of your workspace is that it helps you manage your attention. That’s why you shouldn’t work on the couch in front of the TV or in bed, and it’s also why cubicles are soooo much better than open concept offices.

Manage your attention

Your attention can be managed by getting control of two things – your eyes and your ears.

To create a workspace for your eyes, you can put up a cardboard barrier in the middle of the kitchen table to create a little cubicle for you and your roommate. Also, be sure to remove visual distractions such as televisions or messes (such as piles of dishes) that are begging to be cleaned up.

To create a workspace for your ears, put on headphones, ear plugs, or ear muffs. Do you have noise canceling headphones you can put on? Great. If not, use regular headphones with some classical or acoustic music (so you don’t get distracted by lyrics). Or, put on the ear muffs you use when mowing the lawn, or pop in some earplugs that you usually use in hotels or hostels.

In addition, make sure that you tell the people you live with to not disturb you while you are at work. I recommend doing this by using a visual signal outside the door or workspace that indicates your availability. I use a LED light above the door in my bedroom, where my desk is located, and change the color based on whether I am on a call or working but wish to not be disturbed.

You can go low-tech with this too, by printing out a paper sheet with different statuses (on the phone, on a video call, doing deep work please don’t disturb , etc) and putting a binder clip or clothespin on the corresponding status.

Set up your workspace

How you set up your workspace at home has a significant impact on your productivity and efficiency. It should have good lighting, natural light if possible, and enough space for things like laptops, notebooks, and files.

You should also consider your workspace’s ergonomics, to make work more comfortable. Ergonomic problems can be fixed pretty easily. You don’t have to buy a fancy setup to fix bad ergonomics, you only need to rearrange and adjust your existing furniture and equipment to better suit your needs.

Desk – A desk that is too high will cause strain on your forearms while you type while a low desk height will cause you to hunch over while you work causing strain on your shoulders and back. The general recommended desk height is 25 to 30 inches but that still depends from person to person. You’ll know that your desk is the right height when your legs can fit comfortably under the desk if you are sitting with your feet flat on the floor. Many desks today have height-adjustable legs. If your desk doesn’t, consider propping the legs up on risers.

Chair -The ideal desk chair has a comfortable seat, back support and adjustable arms. Adjust the height of your chair (or find a different chair) so that your feet rest flat on the floor and your thighs are parallel to the floor. The armrests need to be at the proper height so your arms can gently rest on them and your shoulders aren’t hunched. If you’re stuck using a less ideal chair like a hardwood kitchen chair, you can place a folded blanket over the back and seat for cushioning, and use a small pillow or heating pad for lower back support. I have this setup on my 10+ year old office chair and it’s saved me a lot of back pain.

Monitor – The monitor of your computer should be placed 18 to 24 inches in front of you or at arm’s length and it should be placed at an angle of about 10 to 20 degrees. The top line of your screen should be at or slightly below eye level. Basically, you want to be looking down at your screen slightly so you’re not craning your neck. If you don’t have a separate monitor for a laptop, consider purchasing a Bluetooth or USB keyboard and mouse so you can prop your laptop up on a book to get it to the right height, while placing the keyboard and mouse on the table in front of you. Need a second screen but don’t have a computer monitor? Consider using a small television with something like chromecast to share your screen. The separate keyboard and mouse would come in handy here too if you wanted to use the TV as your main monitor.

Not everyone is going to have a fancy home office to work from. But with a few adjustments to the items you already have, you could create a much more functional and comfortable work space.

Associate your work space or setup with work

Here’s another reason not to work from the couch, in front of the TV. It will be a lot easier to get into your work mindset when you are able to associate your work space with work. And it will also be much easier to switch off your work brain at the end of the day and relax.

This can be simple if you work in a separate room from where you typically relax. Out of habit, you will get into work mode when you enter the room, and exit work mode when you leave the room. This is a habit based on your work environment.

But what if you are working from the kitchen table? This is where your work setup becomes the cue for switching “work-mode” on and off. Have a routine before you start work to set up your workspace the same way. Maybe that means cleaning the table, putting the salt and pepper shakers on the counter, and tidying the countertop or washing the dishes so you don’t see distracting messes.

Pro-tip: incorporate these activities into your evening routine so you are better prepared to jump into work in the morning without doing home tasks during work.

Then, when you sit down at the table with your laptop, notebook, cardboard “cubicle” divider, and noise canceling headphones, your habit will be to get into work mode. When you clear the table of your work items, you will switch out of work mode.

Create routines

Having routines is especially important when we work, live, and play in the same space almost all day. Some people dislike routines for the misguided reason that they take away creativity and spontaneity. Ultimately, a routine is creating a habit so you don’t have to use conscious thought to remember what to do and when to do it. This actually frees up more mental bandwidth to have creative and spontaneous thought.

Most of us already have a morning routine, right? You get out of bed, you eat breakfast, you brush your teeth. You don’t have to reference a list each time you do those tasks because they are habitual – they are a routine.

I suggest creating a pre-work and post-work routine. These are what I call my “Launch Sequence” and my “Shutdown Sequence”.

Launch sequence

Your launch sequence should include things like setting up your workspace, communicating your availability to your housemates and your team, logging into your computer, deciding on a hard stop time, reviewing your calendar, reviewing your task list, deciding a priority for the day, and processing your inboxes. For me personally, processing my inbox doesn’t mean responding to all emails, it simply means scanning my inbox for urgent messages. Then I address anything that can’t wait, and spend time in my inbox later in the day to respond.

The point of a launch sequence is to get you into work mode, get you everything you need to be productive (even if that’s a glass of water and a snack), and to fill your brain with the appropriate information you need to tackle your day.

Shutdown sequence

The shutdown sequence helps transition you from work mode to life mode, while wrapping up loose ends form the day.

A shutdown sequence could include sending requests to coworkers, clearing your email, processing notes, reflecting on what you got done or didn’t get done as well as how you can improve tomorrow, planning for the next day, cleaning your workspace (both physical and digital), and psychologically disconnecting from work.

“Turn off” work at a set time each day. When there is no separation between work and life caused by your commute, your workday can start to go long and creep into your personal time. It’s important to set a boundary between your professional and personal life so you can avoid burnout.

Make sure to set a hard stop time each day when you turn off your computer and unplug from work. It helps if you stop receiving email notifications on your phone after this time as well. Have an accountability buddy, whether it’s a friend, coworker or someone you live with, to do a quick check in each day to let them know that you’ve stopped at your hard stop time. This will allow you to maintain a healthy work-life balance. After all, you’ll never be able to finish your to do list, it will just keep getting longer.

Don’t multitask

Multi-tasking makes you more prone to mistakes and less productive, so don’t fall into the trap of trying to kill two birds with one stone. A worker’s error rate goes up 50% and they will take twice as long to complete tasks when multitasking.

You may be protesting “But I can chew bubble gum and walk down the street!”. The thing with multitasking is you can only truly focus on one activity at a time. So if you are trying to do two tasks that require focus at once, neither will turn out well.

But if you’re half-listening to that conference call that you’re not sure why you were invited to it anyway, maybe it would be ok to fold the laundry (as long as you’re on mute). Don’t try to write a report while on a one-on-one call with your boss though, you can’t focus on both of those important tasks at one time, so you’ll perform both worse and take longer to do them.

Get dressed to impress

This is a really common work from home tip that I don’t think is totally necessary. Some people say you should dress up like you would in the office. Now if you’re on back to back video-conference calls all day, you probably want to wear a nice shirt at least. But I don’t think this advice works for everyone. Frankly, I work better when I’m comfortable. I also take breaks to go for walks or exercise throughout the work day, so I’m pretty much always wearing athleisure clothes which definitely not office-appropriate attire. That said, I think the act of changing out of what you wore to bed can sometimes be a good cue to get into “work mode” just like sitting down at your workspace is a good cue for that.

The bottom line

Those are some tactical ways to make sure that you are productive while working from home. Keep in mind that productivity isn’t the be-all end-all of life though. Having balance is really important, and setting boundaries can help with that.

Remember that working from home is really different from working in an office. Be sure to set aside some time in your schedule to socialize, since there’s less casual social contact in a home office than at your typical office.

Also, make sure you get outside. It’s easy to spend the whole day from waking to going to bed inside the house, because you don’t even have to go out the door to hop in the car for your commute.

Working from home comes with its own pros and cons. But with proper planning and and good habits, you will be able to adjust to this new normal in no time.