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Work focus strategies - Keeping your mind on the job
Working for yourself in a home-office environment can be very rewarding and providing you with many advantages to commuting or working for someone else. The downside to the home-office environment is that it can often be rather difficult to maintain a focus on work, more so when there's something that you're not particularly looking forward to doing (or you're simply feeling lazy).
In this short article we'll look at various potential strategies that have worked for other people. Remember, not all people are the same so you will have to trial various options before being able to settle down on a method that suits you.
Set a goal for the day, when it's done, finish the day. Yes, there's more work to be done, there's always more work to be done. You can work all day every day and there will still be more. Do what you set out to do, then finish. With a definite short-term goal, pacing yourself is easier. It's much easier to focus on a comprehensible, digestible chunk of work.
Have an additional task you can switch to whenever you get tired or bored with the main one.
Maybe answer a few emails, or write some documentation. Get some new stimuli but try to keep it with a work focus.
Get up and walk around when you're stuck.
Don't just sit in your chair staring at the computer, refreshing news sites or checking your email.
Walk around and get some fresh air.
Let your mind play with the problem and come up with some new solutions to test out before you go sit down again.
Stop periodically to make priorities lists and to-do lists.
Break tasks down into progressively smaller sections.
While this is important for scheduling purposes it has a huge mental benefit.
With smaller tasks you can hit lots of smaller goals to keep you going, like "finish this quote, reply to this email and then lunch".
Get a favorite album, one you know well and put it on repeat. Try to select something which doesn't have words that you're likely to hook onto (Classical, Electronica, Foreign etc). Drop into your work for an hour or so.
Do this for many repetitions and you'll quickly find that putting the music on drops you into the mental working zone very quickly.
As an added bonus you'll find memories associated with the music so getting back into the work is faster.
Due to the memory associations, you'll need to change music selection periodically.
As a caution, if you use this technique, try not to 'mess around' while listening to the music else you could end up associating the music with something not work related. Consider doing the same for when you need to get some rest and have an album for relaxation.
Get enough sleep and get up early. Quite often if you wake up later and there's already a pace of activity going around you it's difficult to get started. Get up early, take a shower, inspect the garden (it's amazing how many things change in a garden overnight) - you will find that when the rest of the world is ready to start work you're already ahead of them.
Exercise. Walk, run, play squash or do weights, just find something. Exercise will get that sluggish body invigorated again and prepare you for the next bout of work. Exercise helps burn off tension (especially things like squash!) leaving you with a more relaxed state of mind when you return to work.
More water, less caffeine. It's difficult to kick that lovely cup of coffee but if you can drop from 6 cups a day to 3 or less you'll find yourself feeling a lot less tired and jittery with your mind wandering everywhere. Most people simply do not drink sufficient water, water consumption helps in so many ways that it'd be difficult to list them all. Have a cool bottle of water next to you at all times on the desk.
Hopefully some of the above tips will be useful to your home office work situation. There's plenty more other useful methods of helping you keep focus out there so be on the lookout for the next article (just try not to sit in front of the computer hitting the refresh all the time waiting for it ;) ).
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