Tag: work from home

How To Use Your Living Room For Work During Social Distancing

Your living room can have a surprising impact on your productivity. In this article, we'll cover a few tips for fostering creativity and focus.

Coronavirus has forced the world into social distancing. Around the globe, employees are transitioning to remote work. While some people enjoy working from home in their living room, it’s not for everyone. Many people are finding themselves distracted and unproductive. 

While your living room is typically space where you can wind down at the end of a long day, now it’s your office. While you might have to deal with some foot traffic from your roommates and kids, you can make it a calm space for getting stuff done.

Your environment can have a surprising impact on your productivity. In this article, we’ll cover a few tips for setting up your space in a way that’ll foster creativity and focus. 

Want more information on how to keep your mind and body healthy during Quarantine? Check out the ultimate list HERE.

Locate the Green

If your living room has a window, set your desk up against it, facing out. Many studies show that viewing green spaces can improve mood, focus, and efficiency. Taking time to lift your head and look out at trees and nature will also help you combat cabin fever. 

The view doesn’t have to be pristine rolling green hills. The natural light will boost your mood even if you’re looking out to an empty street or vacant lot.

Cornell’s Daylight and Workplace Study found that workers who are seated by a window with natural light reported an 84% drop in eyestrain, blurred vision, and headaches. The study also concluded that workers noticed a boost in productivity and a decrease in drowsiness. 

You might have to move around some furniture to have the perfectly placed home-office in your living room. When you’re looking for the sweet spot, always locate the sunlight. 

work from couch

A Makeshift Ergonomic Set Up

Ergonomics is the scientific study concerned with understanding how humans interact with the other elements of a system. The applied practice is meant to help design offices to optimize human well-being and performance. 

When you’re putting together a living room workspace, you want to reduce the chance of sprain and strain injuries. Believe it or not, sitting on your couch working isn’t the best for your productivity. 

Try to put together a makeshift ergonomic office where you feel comfortable, and you’ll have more energy. 

Avoid Clutter

According to Harvard Business Review, cluttered spaces can have adverse effects on anxiety, stress, and your ability to focus. For many families, the living room is a space for your kids to pile up their toys. It’s often a room full of trinkets and memorabilia. If you want to zone into your job, try to keep this space as organized as possible.

The best way to set up your living room to make it productive is to keep it tidy. Even if you think that it’s not having an impact on your focus, it likely is. You’ll be surprised how much easier it is to pay attention to details when you’re not distracted by small areas of clutter. 

Trips To The Kitchen

As in your real office, you will be getting some exercise during your workday with trips to the kitchen and bathroom. Make sure to put away any sugary snacks out of eyesight, in order not to binge on excess food that you have lying around. Use the pause to actually prepare a quick meal as it will give you a breather from hard work and will boost your creativity.

And for best productivity, treat yourself with some good coffee. To avoid going to the store by going to Coffee or Bust instead where you can find your perfect version of a hot cup of focus and productivity.

Use Your Tv As A Monitor

If you usually work in an office, the transition to working full time on your laptop is tough. Your position is altered, and there will be more strain on your neck and your eyes. If you don’t have a desktop or a monitor, use your TV as one. 

You’ll streamline productivity when you have multiple displays. Another plus side of using your TV is that you’ll be occupying it. You won’t have to worry about kids blaring cartoons while you’re trying to finish up that big project or being distracted by the latest series yourself!

social-distancing

A Final Note

In this time of social isolation, it’s essential to have a clear place to work. We continuously feel bad about having a hard time working. Still, we don’t take a moment to look around at our current situation. Your living room can be a perfect home office, so long as you take the time to optimize your environment.

Meet the Author

Ashley Lipman is an award-winning writer who discovered her passion for providing knowledge to readers worldwide on topics closest to her heart – all things digital. Since her first high school award in Creative Writing, she continues to deliver awesome content through various niches touching the digital sphere.

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  • Your living room can have a surprising impact on your productivity. In this article, we'll cover a few tips for fostering creativity and focus.
  • Your living room can have a surprising impact on your productivity. In this article, we'll cover a few tips for fostering creativity and focus.
  • Your living room can have a surprising impact on your productivity. In this article, we'll cover a few tips for fostering creativity and focus.

5 Key Tips to Make Your Apartment More Productive

If you come home and you just feel lazy, then it’s time to make some changes. Follow these tips for making your apartment ore productive.

For a lot of people, an apartment is a place of immeasurable relaxation. We strive to come home to a place where we feel comforted and at ease. Because of that, however, our havens often turn into places where we collapse after school or work rather than step into a realm of productivity. As important as it is to unwind at the end of the day, it’s just as important to continue ticking off the things on your to-do list and accomplish your daily personal goals. If you find you’re just not as productive at home as you should be—whether you work or study from home or need to get more done once you’re home from work—take a look at these tips for making your apartment a place of productivity. Even with limited space, you can make your home a relaxing yet effective place.

Switch Up Your Lighting Choices

You may not realize it, but the lighting choices you make play a large role in your ability to be productive. When your lighting in your kitchen, by your desk, or wherever you’re trying to be productive isn’t well-lit, then you’ll have a hard time focusing. Do yourself a favor and give yourself a variety of lighting choices to choose from depending on what mood you’re trying to set—for example, bright lights for the morning (avoid fluorescents), focused lighting for your desk, and dim lighting for relaxation.

Declutter Vigorously To Be More Productive

A key aspect of a productive home is that the clutter is at an absolute minimum. You’ll be much more productive if you can swiftly find everything you need. If your home has any of the signs of too much clutter, then you need to take steps to declutter your space. A decluttered space means a decluttered mind, which makes for a much more productive you.

Make Your Workspace a Place You Enjoy

Whatever or wherever your workspace is—the kitchen, a desk, your craft area—make sure it’s an area you enjoy. If you dread sitting down at your desk to work on homework, or if your kitchen is too cluttered for cooking, then you have a problem. Your chair should be cozy, but not too cozy. Make sure you look forward to using your utensils, whether they’re pens or cooking knives or knitting needles. If you don’t enjoy using the space, you won’t be productive.

Decorate Inspirationally

Sometimes all you need for a productive hour is some inspiration. Put up some inspirational quotes, photos, or goals around your workspace so that you always have something to strive for. Inspiration pushes us to do and accomplish more—surround yourself with it.

Set Up a Cleaning Routine

For some people, a productivity session begins with a cleaning routine. If you’re struggling to stay or get productive once you’re at home, try setting up a cleaning routine. For example, tidy up the apartment as soon as you get home or right after dinner, and then settle into work. Don’t use cleaning to procrastinate; rather, use it as a way to kickstart your productivity.

Meet the Author

Kayla is a writer, artist, and designer from the Chicagoland area. She incorporates her creativity to produce work that is informative and thought-provoking.

  • If you come home and you just feel lazy, then it’s time to make some changes. Follow these tips for making your apartment ore productive.
  • If you come home and you just feel lazy, then it’s time to make some changes. Follow these tips for making your apartment ore productive.
  • If you come home and you just feel lazy, then it’s time to make some changes. Follow these tips for making your apartment ore productive.

How to Stay Productive When Working From Home

You may find that your productivity levels slip when working from home. Here are some ways to stay productive when you are at home!

One of the best benefits that your employer could ever give to you is the chance to work from home. No commute, no annoying office politics and no worrying about what you have to wear for the next board meeting. You don’t even have to tiptoe apprehensively down the driveway in the dark because it’s winter and everyone goes to work in the dark in the winter months.

The only tiny complaint that most remote workers have is that it’s not always easy to stay productive when out of the office environment. Being around colleagues and working in a team can often improve office relationships, and you may find that your productivity levels slip a little when working on your own time. It’s okay – there are ways around it and you can make it work for you to be at home. Let’s take a look!

Play Pretend

No, really. It doesn’t matter whether you have a control virtual address online to receive your mail or you have a call forwarding service from your employee’s office, you need to play pretend that you’re going to work! You may not hear the phones ringing off the hook, or see the mailroom staff working their way around the office anymore, but that doesn’t mean that you should work in bed. Get yourself up early and get dressed just like you would if you were heading to the office. This alone can be a great way to get your motivation levels up and feeling like you are about to do something productive for the day. PJs are not appropriate work gear, even when you work from home!

Make Space

The best way that you can really up your productivity levels when you are working from home is to create a space that’s just for your job. This is going above and beyond the dinner table and creating an office for you at home. It gives you somewhere you can sit properly and work without sinking into the sofa and being distracted by day time TV.

Dance It Out!

When you feel your mind wandering it’s time to get up and move. Turn up the radio and shake out the cobwebs of sitting down for too long. That background music can also be beneficial for your productivity levels, as it’s true that you will work better with some surrounding noise.

Communicate Regularly

There are many methods of communication for getting back in touch with your office, and you should use them all. Text your former coworkers, Skype your boss if you have questions and utilize any of the methods of online chat that are at your disposal. All of these will help you to stay connected!

Working from home is nothing short of fun, but you still have to actively do your job if you hope to earn your salary. Don’t be afraid to communicate with your employer if you’re struggling, either. They need to know whether you feel like you’re doing well or not.

This post was written as a contributed post. Contributed posts are written by another party who may wish to be anonymous. Further, all posts are edited and formatted by Elizabeth Ghekiere. Want to guest post for ElizabethJournals? Learn more here.

How to Stay Productive and Work From Home

How to Stay Productive and Work From Home

Working from home is becoming increasingly popular in many professional fields. While this is amazing from employees, it can sometimes become difficult to remain productive in the isolating home setting. Chloe has come up with some amazing tips to stay productive and work from home.

One of the most impactful changes that have arisen with the dawn and flourishing of the internet age is that connectivity is leagues above where it has been historically. The effects of this are wide-ranging and diverse, transforming industries and day to day life all across the globe. One of the most affected areas is the average work culture.

It is frequently not in the interest of an employer to have an employee in the office when what they do can be easily achieved from within the comfort of their home. Similarly, if employees need to take business trips or even personal trips, work can still be completed quickly and effectively.

Statistics show that 10% of the American workforce work from home, with that figure looking set to continue to rise as more and more tasks, require a computer, a smartphone, and an internet connection.

One issue which does arise when working remotely, freelance or not, is that working from home presents its own set of challenges. As lovely as it is to work in your pajamas on your bed, it can be isolating and can suck productivity to the point where you can get to the end of the day and not name one thing you’ve achieved. So, with that said, let’s take a look at how you can keep your productivity levels high when working from home.

Work With Someone

Working with someone seems a strange piece of advice to come first on the list when talking about working from home, but there are some real benefits. Given how popular freelance work is, it’s more than likely that you will know someone who is working freelance as well as you. If you’re good enough friends, then you can develop a sort of informal office atmosphere.

In this atmosphere, they come over to your place every day for a few hours, and you work together, holding each other a bit accountable for your work schedule. The only thing to remember is that you probably don’t want to be too close with whoever it is, since, if it is your best friend, then there is a good chance that you’ll distract one another with a conversation. But, done right, this can maintain the informal atmosphere while creating a pseudo-office out of your home.

Build A Working Area

Another way to create an office-like world for you to work in relates to space. Working from bed is usually a pretty good recipe for drifting off for a delightful afternoon nap, not a formula for conquering objectives and leaving the day satisfied at your work. A quality working space will usually involve a desk, a comfy, ergonomic chair, a source of natural light and some bright lamps, a clean space, charger ports for a laptop and close enough to the kitchen and toilet that you don’t have to break your mood any time you need either.

The advantage of creating a workspace is manifold. On the one hand, it allows you to formalize your work in a way that will make you feel satisfied. Working from home can sometimes make people feel like what they do isn’t really work because it isn’t in an office. It will help you stay organized because all of your work things will be in one place not spread around the house.

Finally, it will help delineate between work time and free time. Working from home can breed an unhealthy lack of boundaries where work can either be non-existent or entirely consuming, taking every waking minute and destroying your private life. Both are bad for productivity in the long run. Having space where, when you are in it, you know it is work time really helps solidify your work-life balance.

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Make A Schedule

This seems an obvious one but it’s certainly worth saying. There’s no need to block out a 9-5 slot with 45 minutes for lunch as if you’re in the office. You ought to experiment with the freedom that designing your own work schedule gives you. Are you most productive 4-7pm? Then start work at midday! Do you have 20-minute attention spans? Then do 40 minutes work every hour from 9 – 6. Figure out what works for you and what you’ll likely discover is that the traditional workplace ours are actually conducive to high inefficiency. You’ll be amazed at how much of your average 9-5 work can be achieved in a couple of super concentrated hours.

How to Stay Productive and Work From Home

Make Sure To Communicate

Your productivity will very likely drop off if you aren’t communicating with people on the outside at least a little bit. The difficulty shows when everything you do you can complete from home, the practical reasons for meeting and talking with others disappear and that then kills the desire to meet with people. Isolation like that can be dangerous and can lead to depression as well as unrealistic standards for your volume and quality of work. Make sure you stay in touch with the outside world.

Conclusion

Working from home is a blessing and anyone locked into a dull office schedule Monday to Friday will be able to tell you that easily. The challenges it presents are actually very difficult but certainly not overwhelmingly so. Hopefully, this list will give you a good sense of what to look out for.

Meet the Author

Chloe Bennet is a productivity writer at Academic Writing Service and Assignment Help portals. She enjoys working from home and writing while on the road. Also, Chloe teaches proofreading techniques at Paper Fellows website.

Ways to Free Yourself from the Traditional Working World

Everyone believes that they have to follow a given path to be happy, secure, and well set up in their golden years. In a nutshell, people often think that they need to get into a good college, choose a major with a stable job outlook, then find employment immediately after graduation. The fact of the matter is that life doesn’t work the way that you plan for it. You might go into a field and find out that you hate it after putting four or more years of study into an advanced degree.

Automation and technology are making it hard for some people who have been established in their careers for decades to hold onto any sense of job security. Because of this, some people are freeing themselves from the working world altogether. And, they are doing so without risking their financial future. Here are good ideas for earning an income that doesn’t involve working traditionally.

Creating Your Own Company

When the average person contemplates starting up a business, they think about needing to apply for various business loans and credits cards and perhaps find others who will invest in their companies. Yes, some businesses cannot be launched without $10,000, $100,000, or even $1,000,000 in seed money

If you are looking to be free from the working world, you don’t need to have much cash at all. You can become an entrepreneur and make a name for yourself as an independent risk taker. Doing so will allow you to write books on your successes, work wherever you want in the world, and know your career will be long-lasting. Company owners typically need to hire only the best to work for them. So, you will need to find a staffing agency that can be of assistance.

Entrepreneurs, business owners, and other busy professionals can significantly benefit from TruPath’s executive search firm. At TruPath, you will match with only the best workers in your field. This Ensures that you are always able to use your time wisely.

So, create a company of your own and stop working traditionally. You will ultimately have all of the freedom that you want without having to feel insecure about retirement. Create your benefits, perks, and rewards by owning a business. ess.

Becoming a Consultant

Working as a consultant will take out of the traditional workforce in a few different ways. Number one, consultants choose what specific arm of business they want to enter. So, if you worked as an accountant, you can become a consultant to small businesses. As a consultant you would educating them on balancing their books, building business credit, and doing their taxes. Consultants are independent, well paid, and capable of turning a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ every time.

Turning Yourself into a Brand

Those who excel at what they do, also tend to sell themselves short. For instance, you might be an incredibly skilled cook whose friends are always asking for recipes and cooking tips. You may be modest about your abilities and would not seriously consider using your talents to earn a full-time income. A person can be highly creative, yet think that they could never sell their creations or teach others. Whether you turn yourself into a brand via a blog or a cable access television show, you only need to do what you do best. In doing your best, you can free yourself from the working world.

Being independent requires you to be a free thinker. While doing things traditionally is fine, you have established that your way can work just as well. So, become a small owner, a consultant, realize your dreams as an entrepreneur, or do all of the above and turn yourself into a major brand.

This post is a collaborative post. Collaborative writing means that while I have contributed to this post and edited its content and formatting, I am not its original author. By posting this content on my blog, I may receive financial compensation. Want to guest post for Jihi Elephant? Learn more here. ere.

  • Ways to Free Yourself from the Traditional Working World
  • Ways to Free Yourself from the Traditional Working World

4 Things You Need to Know Before You Start Working from Home

Working from home is not for everyone, and it is important to keep these points in mind when you’re thinking about the possibility of switching from a regular 9-to-5 desk job to a self-employed career.

Business can be a scary thing. There are so many different things to keep in mind when starting a company. But it is arguably one of the most popular ways to earn a living and still have plenty of time to yourself. There are many advantages such as being able to work in the comfort of your own home, having more time to take care of your kids and it gives you far more job security if you’re willing to invest the time into creating a solid career.

You Will Be Transforming Your Home

It is important to create your own office space at home if you want to be more productive. While many people believe that you can just move around the house with a laptop or at a local coffee shop, this is still your job. It’s important to remember that work is serious and you need to set up your very own office. Having your own office will help you if you want to be more efficient with your work.

desk top

There Will Be Down Periods

Every at-home business or career choice is going to have periods where you are not making much money. For instance, a freelancer (at least, when they start fresh) is going to have weeks or even months with a work drought, and at other times you’ll be getting more jobs than you can take on. To remedy this, you should learn about how a working capital loan works so that you can better prepare your financial situation to overcome this problem. As you become more experienced, you will have more opportunities to balance your workload as to have fewer downtime periods. But at the start, it can be difficult to stay afloat if you do not save your profits.

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You Still Need a Schedule

While working at home is a great way to achieve more freedom in life, it does not mean that you can just work whenever you feel like it. You are still going to need a schedule, and you are still going to need to set working hours where you focus only on work and nothing else. It is easy to get distracted especially as you work from home, so make sure you’re taking it seriously by maintaining a set schedule and trying your best to stick to it. Learn more about time management here.

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The Beginning is the Hardest Part

While working from home is a lucrative career choice that has the potential to be a large source of income, you need to remember that the start is slow. Whether you want to be a freelancer or if you want to start your own company, the beginning is where you’ll be spending more money than you make, or earning pennies compared to what more experienced at-home workers are pulling in. Don’t let this discourage you and make sure you do your best to stay afloat and build experience to grow.

If you plan on starting your own business at home, it is important to follow these pointers for success!

This post was written in collaboration. Collaborative writing means that while I have contributed to this post and edited its content and formatting, I am not its original author. By posting this content on my blog, I receive financial compensation. Want to write a post for Jihi Elephant? Learn more here. 

Working from home is not for everyone, and it is important to keep these points in mind when you’re thinking about the possibility of switching.