6 Ways to Stay Motivated When Working from Home

Working from home has become a largely common action that employees have accepted to stay healthy and further keep a more flexible work-life arrangement. Although when working from home many people may find it extremely difficult to stay focused on the task at hand and stay motivated to do work. Many may find they procrastinate much more than when they are in an office completing their regular work activities.

Correspondingly, it has become integral for individuals to find a way to stay motivated when working from home. Motivation allows us to put all our energy into a task whilst at work with a unique purpose and goal of effectively completing the task to the best of one’s ability both efficiently and effectively.

Below are six different ways that employees can apply when working from home to effectively stay motivated.

Create the Perfect Environment

Workplace environments are essential in attaining motivation when working from home. To stay motivated effectively, you should create a space for work that is free from distractions and a space in which you can concentrate to achieve your full working potential.

In this workspace, you may want to consider context-dependent cues. In psychology, context-dependent cues are the ways various the surroundings and the environment around an individual may influence one’s memory. This means you should create a work environment that aims to evoke the same atmosphere of when you are at work. In turn, this will allow for the effective recollection of knowledge you may have found easy to consider whilst at work when at home.

Moreover, create a space that encourages you to enter the flow state. The great psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the feeling of being in the zone as a state of flow. When we are motivated, we are fully concentrated on completing tasks at hand entering a flow state that increases work productivity and efficiency. Ensuring you are removing distractions from your space such as to many snacks, controllable ambient sounds, pets and even games will encourage a state of flow and in turn increase motivation while working from home.

Goal Setting

Setting goals is highly important in ensuring you stay motivated when working from home. When one sets goals, you are developing a clear focus towards what you want to have completed by a specific period in time.

To ensure your goals are realistic towards completing work and staying motivated when working from home you should create small goals. One example of a goal that may help motivation is a goal that you will get a certain number of tasks done within a certain period.

In setting goals, it not only motivates you as an individual to achieve the goals at hand, yet also it encourages you to be accountable to attaining these goals. It allows you to push yourself to achieve the vision you want through working much harder whilst at home.

Create a Plan

Effectively creating a plan to highlight how you will work when working from home is essential in achieving motivation. When a plan is created employees have a clear course of action towards what they need to achieve and do during certain points in the day.

An effective plan that outlines the particular activities that need to be done at certain times of the day and a plan that highlights certain points for a break is largely needed to be motivated. Moreover, the plan will allow you to have a strategy to approach a piece of work if written in detail. This will allow for a sense of ease of direction when attempting to complete a task. This ensures one is motivated as the task at hand becomes largely clear and straight-forward to complete.

When working from home a major distraction to work is not knowing what to do in certain activities and further certain points in the day. Therefore, to effectively ensure you are not distracted and ensure you stay motivated to work it is integral to create a plan that is easy to make and largely detailed to ensure you stay focused.

Take Short Breaks

Having breaks when at work is largely important, although having breaks when at home is drastically more important to stay motivated when completing work. Having breaks ensure that the mental health of an individual is in a good state, breaks promote the reduction of stress and fatigue. Moreover, breaks promote not only motivation but individual productivity and outstanding performance enhancements if done appropriately.

One effective way to structure yourself to taking appropriate breaks whilst working from home is through the Pomodoro Technique. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that may be utilised to effectively ensure employees stay motivated and effectively complete tasks at hand efficiently. Here are six steps to using the Pomodoro Technique:

1. 1. 1. Choose the task you wish to complete
      2. Set a timer for 25 minutes
      3. Complete focused work on the task
      4. End work when the timer rings
      5. Take a short break (3-5 minutes) and repeat
      6. After repeating four times take one long break (15-30 minutes), then go back to step one and restart the process

When one effectively organises short breaks during work and is highly switched on and focused on the work they wish to achieve, motivation levels are extremely high. This is due to workplace concentration being increased to do the tasks at hand before taking a break, effectively pushing yourself further and faster than before.

Work in Teams

Working in teams is highly important in achieving motivation when working at home. Teams influence one another to work more productively and effectively towards the completion of various tasks at hand. Working in teams is to effectively build trust and motivation through the collaboration of individuals and sharing of skills and knowledge.

Working online at home with a large or small team is greatly recommended for increasing motivation. Studies have effectively shown that when one employee is motivated to work effectively a substantial influence and impact on employees surrounding the employee occurs. This means those employees are more likely to work harder and become motivated.

Moreover, working in teams encourages the aforementioned context-dependent cue for individuals. This means that one may feel as though they are in their original work environment and thus work more effectively with an increased concentration and motivation. Thus, when working from home working in teams is an effective strategy for staying motivated.

Reward Yourself

Finally, rewarding yourself is vastly essential in ensuring you stay motivated when working from home. Implementing your reward system for completing work when at home is an effective way to stay motivated and further work more productively and effectively.

Rewards are commonly used by management to motivate employees to work towards reaching a goal for achieving a reward. Correspondingly when at home you should try to recreate this to ensure that your motivation from working at home to complete tasks is staying in a top position.

This may be done through implementing a reward such as eating your favourite snack for every task completed. Another reward you could have is playing a game once you have met 3 goals you have set yourself for the day. Another reward could be playing with your pet or even going for a run to enjoy the fresh air and promote good physical and mental well-being. Any reward that sounds of interest to you should be used to motivate you to meet certain goals or work tasks to work effectively when at home.