Twenty Ways to Stay Productive When Working at Home - Scott H Young

Highlights

1) Build a Work Ethic
2) Don’t Overestimate Your Productivity
3) Don’t Count the Low-Value Tasks
4) Cut Out Distractions
5) Start Early
6) Know Thy Energy
7) Learn to Say No
8) Set Daily Goals
9) Use Parkinsons Law - a task will expand to the time you give it. Crunch your workload by giving yourself only a few minutes to finish tasks where completion is more important than perfection.
10) Learn to Churn - This means that once you run out of ideas, you tell yourself that your goal is volume not quality. Tell yourself that you will redo it later if it is too horrible.
11) Create a Professional Space
12) Set Work Hours
13) What’s Your MIT? Always know what your Most Important Task is. Even if the rest of the day is unproductive, your day was still valuable if you get that task done.
14) Have a Social Life
15) Vary Your Tasks - I like to split up different tasks throughout the day so I can use different mental “muscles.” This keeps me fresh and productive without the need for long breaks.
16) Boredom before Quitting - resist the temptation to go online or do something else. Even if you could postpone your work hours, stick it through another ten or fifteen minutes.
17) Get Outside Perspectives
18) Give Yourself Overtime
19) The Extra 15 - When you get stuck or feel a strong urge to quit, just commit to do an extra fifteen minutes of work. Usually this is enough to carry you out of the slump and move forward. If it isn’t then you probably need a break.
20) Utilize Your Flexibility