How I’m Being More Productive During the Quarantine: Tips I’ve Learned from the Experts

Maintain a morning ritual

Resist the urge to sleep in. Wake up at the same time every day, preferably in the morning. Have a ritual in place, whether it’s a morning run, meditation, or even just getting that first cup of coffee. I’ve found doing this brings some normalcy when everything else in the world is outside of your control.

Put on your pants, you animal

Take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed. Just because it’s a world health crisis doesn’t mean personal hygiene should take a back seat. If anything it’s more important now than ever. We’re all big boys and girls so let’s act it.

Some days there’s a lot of mess in my head and I forget to brush my teeth or delay a shower. I might go hours without noticing but underlying something feels, just, and little off. Finally a light bulb in my head clicks on I realize it’s my dirty mouth. After a 2-minute brush I’m recharged and a proper human again.

Ditto on when I don’t change out of my exercise gear and sit in a stew of my own bodily creation. I just feel like a lousy, unproductive lump. There are some enclothed cognition experiments where participants were asked to complete a set of cognitive tasks. One set wore painter’s clothes and the other wore professional wear. Spoiler alert, the participants who wore professional wear performed better. I feel like the repeatability of the experiment may be weak sauce but hey, it supports my argument! We think therefore we are.

Wear something you feel good in. Somewhere between gym shorts and tuxedo will do fine.

If you have a big presentation try dressing up a little. No need for captoe oxford shoes or heels but a nice shirt or blouse might give you that extra edge.

And when you’re on a Zoom call please make sure you have pants. No one wants to see your boxer briefs chief, except maybe that cute girl in marketing that’s always making eyes.

Make your workspace work for you – A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

You work best when your mind is at it’s best. Messy desk, messy mind – (except for you brilliant exceptions to the rule where chaos makes your skills stronger.) Maintain a tidy work area. I find when I have a slew of papers scattered across my desk I can’t focus until they’re tucked away. I keep a banker’s box nearby to do an arm sweep into it of non-essential desk items. It provides a temporary clean. I’ll go through the contents of the box later.

Don’t let technology hold you back if it can be solved for less than $300.

If you’re used to using 2 monitors at work but now are trying to do the same work with the same productivity on a 14″ laptop screen, typing a laptop keyboard you’re going to be behind from the start. A secondary monitor and inexpensive keyboard and mouse set can be had for less. Extra advantage: you will be reducing the pressure on your wrists and reducing overall fatigue. Sure you might be a keyboard jockey now, blazing ahead but this is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll need continued speed for this race.

If your internet is slowing down your work give your ISP call.

It’s annoying when you are the pixelated one on Zoom with frequent “interrupted connection.” Ask about any specials that are currently available. You might find you are able to increase your speed and lower your costs. We did. We went from a 200 Mbps download speed to 500 Mbps and saved $10 in the month in the process. Note: your internet provider might give you a run around at first and tell you those special rates are only for “new customers”, but be courteous and repeat your position.

Here’s a script that you can use. I’ve found it works over the phone and some friends have successfully tried it even via chat.

“I really like the service with [XYZ Company] and have been a loyal customer for [# years]. You guys have been great. I would really like to continue and not change over but a competitor is offering a [competitors package/rate]. Can you match this rate?”

This script allows the customer service person to offer you customer retention incentives. Remember, they aren’t the enemy. There are just certain internal rules they need to follow before offering discounts. If you remain pleasant you’ll feel better about yourself. The rep will be happy you did not ruin his day at a seemingly thankless call center job.

You might not get 100% of what you want but odds are what the customer service person offers will likely be better than what you have already. It’s okay to leave some money on the table.

Communicate early and often (over-communicate)

Keep your team abreast of the status of your work. Don’t think it’s too much – people’s threshold is high. If your teammates don’t roll their eyes when a new status update hits their mailbox you’re probably not communicating often enough.

Share a morning and an evening update with you manager, and teammates where appropriate. You’re probably killing it at home and are more productive than normal but unfortunately people measure work product based on what they can see. With knowledge work there’s lots of hidden work. You only get credit if you show you work.

Be overly visible and be overly helpful. It is only a little extra effort and will pay back in spades later.

Be clear about expectations

This ties into the above. Be clear about what you can and cannot do early. It will help level-set your manager and other teammates’ expectations about you. It is far better to know early that something cannot be done than to find out later once other downstream tasks have been assigned and are in-process. Communicate this one level up (your boss) and one level down (your subordinates, if applicable) in your organization.

If you’re working on a task and it looks like a slow down is eminent communicate that too. Try to anticipate in advance where the stumbling blocks will be so you are not surprising anyone with a “yellow” or “at-risk” status. Be realistic but also leave yourself some slack for unforeseen events, if you know what I mean.

Set clear boundaries between home life and home life

When your home is your office and your office your home things everything seems like a gray area. Don’t let it be. Try to keep your time commitments to work separate from yours at home.

That means no social media during work. And that also means no doing errands doing work too.

Talk to others in your family about your work situation. Unless they are used to working-from-home themselves they may not understand your position. Make boundaries clear. Explain that your “office” is your “office” and while you appreciate the effort that they shouldn’t randomly pop-in to talk to you. They also shouldn’t schedule work for you during this time or have any expectation of “honey-do” lists being completed.

Explain on the flip side, this budgeting of time also has benefits to them. Explain that this line of demarcation means that family time is reserved only for that and work shouldn’t spillover. The key to this is you need to make good on this commitment and lead by example. As soon your partner and family see you graying the lines they will see this as a license for them as well.

I hope that was helpful. What are some of your own tips and tricks to enhance your productivity when working from home?