43. How to Focus When You’re Working From Home
Episode 43
Working from home used to be such a luxury. Now, it’s the norm. And while working in your pajamas certainly has its perks, it’s not always easy to work and live in the same space.
In this week’s episode, we get into some nitty-gritty, practical strategies for how to focus when you’re working from home. We also talk about mindset, which just might be the most important strategy of all. (I know; I knowwww — I used to roll my eyes too.)
🎙️Other Episodes + Resources Mentioned
Episode 05 → The Secret to a Good Task Management System
Episode 06 → January Q&A: Focus Tips and Job Skills
Episode 10 → February Q&A: Tips for Better Task Management and Focus
Episode 16 → How to Set Up Your Ideal Work or Study Space: 10 Tip
✏️ FREE DOWNLOADS:
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I am choosing not to spend my time fixing them 😉
43 How to focus when you're working from home===
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Hello there you are listening to episode 43 of the learn and work smarter podcast. I am Katie. And I appreciate you being here with me today, whether you are listening on a podcast app or maybe watching this video at the learn and work smarter YouTube channel.Thank you for being here today. We're talking about something that I think is relevant to a lot of people, and that is trying to find ways to focus when we're working at home.
The reason this is such a relevant topic, topic to so many listeners, is that I know that so many of my listeners are students who study from home or maybe at a temporary workspace, like a campus dorm. And then some of my listeners are working professionals who either work from home full time, or perhaps they're in a flexible position that allow you to work from home some of the time.
So it is my intention that most of today's tips are going to be helpful for both students and working professionals.
But there are a few tips that are going to apply more directly to this situation that working professionals find themselves [00:01:00] in. But if you're a student stick around, because many of these tips are for you as well.
As always, right, I encourage you to listen all the way through; take what you find valuable and then leave the rest.
Also at the end of this episode, if you want more tips to increase your focus at school and work, then head to episodes 10 and six in both of those episodes, I offer more how to focus tips. Okay. We have a lot to talk about today, so let's get into it.
All right. So my first piece of advice that I give to a lot of my adult professional clients is kind of like [00:02:00] a reality check and I don't want to sound Ted Talk-y or righteous or anything like that. Please know that that is not my intention. But the truth is that many people who struggle to focus when working from home are not taking it seriously. You have to take it seriously.
Okay. This is your job. Whether you work for someone else or you work for yourself, you're expected to do what it takes to get your job done.
And if we don't take ourselves seriously and we don't take our focus seriously, then soon enough others are not going to take us seriously either.
If you are at all unhappy with how you've been operating or not operating while working from home and you're listening to this podcast looking for some real advice, then we've got to start with looking at our current mode of operation and asking ourselves: am I taking my job seriously? Because I truly hear all the time from [00:03:00] people who tell me with frustration and sometimes desperation about how hard it is for them to focus when they're working at home. Their job performance is suffering. They're lashing out at the people they live with for distracting them.But then when we dig into it and I'm asking some sort of like questions about the strategies they're using, the reality is that they're actually not using any strategies at all.
Now this is not the case for everyone. I know that you know, everyone's work from home situation varies. Okay but my message here, that it is important to honestly assess how you're handling your home and work situation -home work situation or from home situation, whatever, and really ask yourself if you're doing all you can, because it very well might be that by the time we get to the end of this episode, and you hear all of the strategies you might be saying to yourself, "yes, katie.
I do all of that. And I still can't focus because I have young kids at home and my mother-in-law just moved in after her hip surgery."Whatever [00:04:00] the case may be. But those scenarios are extenuating scenarios, right? And those situations are usually temporary. But even still, if that is your situation You will find value from what we talk about here today.
Okay, but one more thing too, with ADHD.So. If you have ADHD, it is absolutely not realistic. For you to think that you can just focus more.
That is just not how ADHD works. Okay. You can't demand that you focus more, that you concentrate harder. That's not how it works. And if you have ADHD, you know that. Okay, because we're talking neurology and biology and chemicals and all the, you know, cocktail of neurotransmitters and chemicals that are in your brain that are operating differently than someone without ADHD. Okay.
So, no, you're not going to hear me anywhere in this episode say if you have ADHD, you just need to focus harder. Because then, like I should be out of a job. [00:05:00] All right. But if you have ADHD, I want you to listen to this episode all the way through. And implement every single one of the strategies that we talk about today because these strategies apply to you too. Okay and saying, well, these won't work because I have ADHD.No. These can work and you can have ADHD. Okay. And because you have ADHD, that is why you more than anybody else needs to implement these strategies. The strategies we talk about today are designed to create structure and to minimize internal and external distractions. Okay, not to get rid of them all.
And it's not going to be perfect. But please hear me out. If you have ADHD, you've got to implement every single one of these, the strategies. Okay. You can tweak them. You can modify them, you can make your own, you can have some strategies that you [00:06:00] use that I don't mention on the podcast here today, but you've got to put in the structure and the systems.
Okay. But back to the scenario that applies to most people, which is that we have a work from home job, or maybe we're allowed to. You know, work from home a certain amount of days each week. And when we're at home, we're just finding it hard to focus on our work. We get distracted by tasks around the house.
We think, oh, let me just put that load of laundry in real quick. Before I start this project, and then you get up and you get a snack and you realize that you need to go grocery shopping. So now you're writing a grocery shopping list. Right. And then before, you know what, the day is practically over. And you haven't achieved what you set out to achieve.
Or maybe it's not the home distractions that are getting you, but other kinds of distractions, such as literally having the world at your fingertips and getting distracted by YouTube or Reddit, or maybe even doing, you know, fake, shallow productivity things like organizing your digital space [00:07:00] or replying to emails when you know that you have more. Needle moving tasks to accomplish. It's not that those things aren't worth doing. Yes, but you can't be doing those for eight hours a day and calling it your job. Right.
If any of my sort of tip of the tongue scenarios or examples that I just rattled off are resonating with you right now, you're like, oh, I do the laundry and I get a snack and whoop, I guess that's me, then may I make the gentlest suggestion that your lack of focus when you're working from home might perhaps be due to a lack of strategies to remove the distractions and promote concentration?
And actually that is a very important distinction that I want to make that's relevant as we move through the rest of the suggestions I have, because some of today's tips are geared, geared toward reducing distractions. And then others are geared toward improving or increasing your focus. Okay. And while there is certainly an overlap there, there's also kind of two separate buckets or two [00:08:00] different ways to think about the issue.So with that said, let's start with some tips to reduce distractions. Okay. That's where we're going to begin.
The first one is absolutely on brand. If you have been with me for a while, either in this podcast or through my SchoolHabits content, but the phone. Must without question go in another room. We tell ourselves all of the time that we are stronger than our phones, but we are not .
I've given the same sort of explanation before on another one of my episodes. I can't remember which one it is, but I'm going to say it here again, because it's that important.
Way back thousands of years ago, we needed to be hyper alert to our surroundings in order to stay alive.If there's a sort of like rustle in the brush, boom, we're on it, right.
It could be a tiger. Hypervigilance and adrenaline activated. Right. If we hear a growl, it could be our fellow tri person's hungry stomach, or maybe it could be a tiger on the trail behind us. But because we wanted to survive, we [00:09:00] respond with that same burst of cortisol and adrenaline. And a whole cocktail of chemicals that prepare us for fight or flight.We needed to perceive and assess all of the external stimulation in our immediate environment so we like we wouldn't die. Kind of important.
Now fast forward to today and technology has evolved exponentially, but our evolutionary mechanisms for assessing danger have honestly not evolved that much. Sure.
Most of us are not responding to a tiger in the brush, but the ding from our phone triggers the exact same physiological response in us. So we hear a dang. We're like, Who's that? What's that?. What do I do? What do I need to do in response to that?And because these responses are essentially primal, they become nearly impossible to fight or overcome, especially in the moment.
So as much as we love to tell ourselves, oh, I'm just going to flip my phone upside down next to me and [00:10:00] I'm just going to like put it on silent. That is not enough. All right, because the phone now fully represents potential danger. It's like seeing a cave, but not seeing the tiger inside of it, but you know what tiger lives there because you've seen a tiger. I emerged from the cave before.
Right. So walking by that cave or even just seeing it from a distance is going to trigger that physiological response that the actual tiger would have triggered in us. And that same physiological response that we get by seeing our phone. The phone represents all the potential urgency that we might have to respond to. Our phone is the cave.
Does that make sense?
So if you've been struggling to focus when working from home or heck even when working from the office, And you're working with your phone anywhere at all within your line of vision, or you're able to maybe perceive that it's behind your coffee mug, you are setting yourself up for failure. Put your phone in another room and assure yourself that you will be able to check your phone during your designated breaks that you [00:11:00] build into your schedule.
So, so far, we have tip number one, which is to get real about how seriously you're taking your job and your focus strategies in the first place.
The second tip is to quit all of the stories about why you need your phone when you're working. And put the phone in another room until your designated breaks.
Now, another strategy to reduce distractions is to see if you can implement the concept of office hours. Now this isn't going to work for everybody because depending on what type of job you have, this tip may not apply to you, but if you're a person who people need semi-regular access to like maybe a manager or a team leader or a professor, then you obviously need to make yourself available to those people who need you.
I get that. But if anybody can come knocking on your door or sending you a message or blowing up your slack channel or calling you, or sending you an email at any time at all to run something by you, or maybe just to pick your brain right.
Or hop on a quick call. Those things, oh my God, those expressions just like [00:12:00] boil my blood. Whatever it is that people need so urgently. If they can do that anytime of the day, you are never going to get any work done.
Now the concept of office hours is exactly what it sounds like. You've set up a window of time either each day or each week, where you are free to meet with the people who need access to you.
You can make this window as long or as short as you want, or as frequent or not frequent as you need it to be, but it is predictable and you stick to it and you make it known.
So we have, you know, Mary from marketing is like, Hey, can I run something by you real quick?
You can let her know that she can stop by any time between one and three. And you are all ears.
Right now when I teach this strategy to some of my adult clients, but I often hear is that, you know, they don't want to appear inaccessible or unhelpful, or like not a team player. And I get it. Right. But Mary from marketing would love to know that she can pop in any day from one to three and get your full [00:13:00] attention.
People want to know when you're accessible. Think about store hours. Isn't it nice to know that a certain store is open from nine to five. For example. That's predictable. And we customers appreciate that predictability. Now imagine if a store kept changing their hours of operation and you had no idea when you could stop by? All right, so that'd be really annoying. So we have to start looking at this differently. People want to know when you're available and it's helpful if we make those office hours known.
There's a couple of different ways that you can do that. The simplest is literally to just start telling people.
Okay another tip -so this is tip four if you're counting- is to nail the morning routine.
Now, there are some really interesting ideas out there about the morning routine. Some diehards that I get the biggest chuckle out of, you know, are promoting this idea that you got to wake up at 4:00 AM to journal for an hour and then meditate for an hour and then do sprints for 30 minutes and then get in the [00:14:00] cold plunge and then do the infrared sauna.
And then, you know, then you're locked and loaded and and ready for the day. Right. Like that's abbbsolutely absurd and they tend to not have children. I laugh at these suggestions because there's just no chance in heck that I, or you might listeners have time for an uninterrupted uh, three and a half hour morning routine that begins with an hour of journaling.
Right? So rest assured I am not suggesting any of that today.
But still. Even if you have 11 kids to get out the door to the bus stop, you still have space for a series of actions that you do every morning. Your morning routine could take four minutes. We can call that a routine. Maybe you make your bed, you start the coffee machine and while that's brewing, you drink a cup of water. And after that you sit at the kitchen counter for two minutes with a pad of paper and you dump your thoughts for the day. Okay. One minute and dump your thoughts for the day.
Boom. Done. And you do this every morning when you work from home. Over the time, this little [00:15:00] ritual is going to signal to your brain that, Hey, it's time to work. Like we're going to do this now. You had your coffee, you made your bed, you drank your water, you did your little, you know, mind dump thing, let's go.
Moving on tip five is to have a plan before you start.
Our concentration is absolute junk. If we don't know what it is we're supposed to be focusing on.
Other than putting the phone in the other room, this might be the most important tip on the entire list.
Your goal has got to be to get absolute clarity about your time and your tasks. If you go to learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/43, which is linked below, I have a free weekly planner template that is perfect for the step.
You can print it out and you can use it digitally, totally free. It gives you a place to visually see what you're doing and when you're doing it. The template is ideal for the practice of time-blocking. Time-blocking is a very powerful technique that can help you stay focused and predictive when working from home.
So instead of [00:16:00] multitasking or doing a little of this and then a little of that, and then a little of this, which tends to totally scatter our attention, time-blocking has us dedicate specific chunks of time to one task.
For example, we might block 10 to noon for uninterrupted work on a project. Okay. And then from noon to 1230 for email and admin tasks. By assigning your tasks to blocks of time, you create a sense of urgency and structure, which makes it easier to stay focused because you know what you're doing and when you're doing it and how long you're doing it for.
Also time-blocking gives our brain permission to focus on the thing that we're supposed to be concentrating on because we know that there's another block of time later in the day, where we're going to be able to focus on the other things.
So for example, if we're working on that project from 10 to noon and we're internally distracted and tempted to check our email during that time, We can just glance at our time block plan to see that we have given ourselves permission to give attention to emails from 12 to 1230. We are [00:17:00] free and clear to focus on the project without the anxiety of missing anything.
When we're working from home, it is important to know what we're doing and when we plan to do it before we begin our work for the day. If you wake up, we go over to our desk and we sort of think to ourselves on what am I doing today? Then the answer to that question could literally be anything.
And then likely it's not going to be the right stuff. So, what do we do to increase our focus on the right stuff? Well, we assess our tasks, which we are managing and our task management system.
Yes that we talked all about an episode five and like so many other episodes. Okay.
And bonus points if you can get your work plan or your time block plan created the night before. If you have the, I'm going to use the word luxury here, if you have the luxury and the space of being able to create a morning routine that's a little bit more, you know, spacious and longer than maybe you sit down , in the morning when you're having your cup of coffee to map out your work for the [00:18:00] day. That's not my scenario, I got to get kids on the bus. So I'm going to do mine the night before.
All right. I'm going to look at my task list before I shut down my work for the day. I am looking at the things that I didn't get a chance to do. I have moved those to the next day's task list. And I am putting those into my time block plan. So that when I wake up the next morning and I sit down at my desk, I know what it is that I'm doing.
Cause I told myself what it was going to be the night before.
All right. Tip six, be reasonably ambitious with your schedule. Motivation and focus tank when our demands are either too light or too heavy. So it's important to find that sweet spot of ambition that pushes you to be productive, but doesn't overwhelm you.
If your to-do list is too long, you're going to feel discouraged before you even begin. On the other hand, if it's too easy, you're going to drag your feet and feel unaccomplished at the end of the day, because you're not working on the right things. Or enough of the right things. So, how do we know what's a reasonably and ambitious, sweet [00:19:00] spot. Only, you know, that. And it is something that you figure out after intentionally collecting data and observing yourself for a few weeks.
Pay attention to how you feel at the end of the day.
Do you feel productive? Do you feel accomplished? Great then that is an opportunity for data collection. What projects did you work on those days? Right? And can you use that schedule? of a particularly good day that you had as a template for future days. But on the other hand, if you had a crummy day, can you figure out why?
Like, was your workload too much? Were you interrupted too many times? That's the case for office hours, don't you think? Were you bored and unmotivated? Then maybe your day was not structured with enough clarity or enough tasks.
Tip seven, set up your workspace to support your focus in episode 16, all of these are linked below, we dive deep into how to optimize your workspace, according to like your learning preferences or your yeah- your learning preferences. So I encourage you to give that episode or listen for more in-depth tips after [00:20:00] this, but briefly let me say this. Your workspace has a huge impact on your ability to focus. Ideally Okay, and this isn't everyone's scenario, but ideally we should have a designated space for work that feels comfortable, organized, and free from distractions. And that brings us joy.
I'm going to throw that one in too. Don't neglect the sounds of your environment. Do you need earplugs or maybe noise-canceling headphones? Can I tell you guys a real fast story about head, um, earplugs. I use the brand loop L O O P earplugs when I'm working. And the other day I was working from home and the neighbor's lawn care folks were mowing the lawn. And I can't, I just there's certain sounds that just really get me.
And so I put my loop earplugs in. And all was good, you know? I'm typing away. And I have the Apple watch so I could look at my watch and I realized my phone was ringing. So I go to pick up my phone. And I couldn't hear the [00:21:00] person I'm talking into the phone and I'm like, hello. Hello. And I was like, oh, why are they sound so like underwater, like. I actually just got a new phone too.
So I'm like is my new phone? Like the day before something. Is it my new phone. I had my earplugs in. And I had forgotten. Um, but I hung up the phone. The phone call ended cause I was like, this is dumb. I can't hear them. I can't hear the person. So get the loop earplugs. Cause they block out all sounds including the ones you need to hear! Anyways, whether you set up a separate room. Just share that. Whether you set up like maybe a separate rum or a space, or just a corner of your apartment.
If you're a student in a dorm room, then you've got your desk, right. Make sure that the space you're working or studying at signals work to your brain. Keep it tidy. Remove non-work-related clutter. Equip it with the tools that you need to stay on task. Little adjustments, like proper lighting and a comfortable chair can make a big difference in how long you're able to focus.
If you sit down to do your work at a home [00:22:00] office and you have your, um, utility bills there and your kids' you know, soccer schedule here and you know that you have to input those into the calendar. Of course you're not going to be able to focus. Right. So this is what I'm talking about and you got to take this stuff seriously. Which, I'm going to come back to that in a second. But when we're talking about optimizing our work space for focus, Like that really means you've got to optimize your workspace for focus.
Well, what are you doing on your workspace? You're working, right? You're working on your projects. You're working on your job. Well is your kids' soccer schedule your job? Okay. Is paying the utility bill your job? Technically it is, but it's not the job that you're doing from nine to five that you're getting paid for. That needs to happen on your own time. Maybe you schedule that into one of your admin blocks.
So of course it can happen within the hours of nine to five. That's kind of the privilege of being able to work from home. You can get some of those work things done in, get some of those non-work things done during the day. But you get [00:23:00] those done at a time that you preplanned to get them done. Okay.
You control them, not the other way around.
And tip eight. Just bear with me here. Take it seriously. Again. I know that I opened the list with this tip, so it might seem weird to close with it because I'm sort of duplicating tips here, but it is truly that important. I can give you all of the strategies and all of the hacks to stay focused, but none of them are going to stick unless you make the commitment to take working from home as seriously as you would working in an office or, you know, a classroom, wherever it is that you work. Focus is a skill. And like any skill, it requires consistent practice and dedication.
So my final word of advice is to adopt a mindset of respect for your time and your work, treat it with the seriousness that it deserves and then watch how much easier it becomes to stay focused. All right.
So let's do a quick [00:24:00] recap of the tips we covered today.
First, take your work. Seriously. You’ve got to commit to staying focused, make; this a project of yours.
Two: put your phone in another room.
Three set office hours, if possible, to manage interruptions and expectations.
Fourth, establish a simple morning routine to kickstart in your focus.
Five have a clear plan before you begin working.
Remember you can use the free weekly time block planner, which is at learnandworksmarter.com/podcast/43. Linked below.
Number six, be reasonably ambitious with your schedule - that may take a little time to figure out.
Seven set up your workspace to support your focus.
And finally, remember to take your focus and yourself seriously, because if you don't, no one else is going to.
Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the learn and work smarter podcast.
If you enjoy today's tips, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Or a follow on YouTube for more content to help you stay productive [00:25:00] and focused. And if you found this episode helpful, consider leaving a review or sharing it with a friend who could use these strategies too. And remember: never stop learning.
