Earlier, a job meant going to the office and working in collaboration with your colleagues. Because personal interaction and exchange of files are required in almost all the jobs, so going to the office was important. But with advancements in technology and the development of cloud technology, work can be done from everywhere. You can easily work while sitting in a cafe or while sitting in your bed. Also, some employers promote work from home culture as then they do not have to maintain offices’ property and that saves a lot of money for them. While giving liberty to the employees of working at the comfort of their home.
Telecommuting or ‘work from home’ culture has been increased significantly from last 2-3 years. This is because most people work on laptops and communicate through emails and chats, which can be done from anywhere. Also, people do not have to work part-time because, with telecommuting, they can easily manage everything together while working full time from home. ‘Work from home’ does not necessarily mean working from home. You can easily be working from anywhere in the world. This is also beneficial for companies as they can get better employees from around the world and do not have to rely just on local employees.
But working from home is not as easy as it sounds. Though it can be very comfortable to sit in your bed and work, maintaining concentration on work with this comfort can be pretty hard. There can be many distractions around you, like your home chores, family members and many others. People might visit you at your home, which distracts you further. Also, when you go to the office, you get ready and your mind is set to work. But when you sit at home, your mind is not exactly set for work and even the smallest of things can distract you. But not to worry because technology has a solution to every problem of yours.
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Tools to help you concentrate
Concentration and discipline are just a state of mind. So, you have to maintain an environment where there are minimal distractions so you can focus better on work. But that is not enough to keep your mind straight. To help you, here are five tools that you can use to make sure that your mind is set for work and you can increase your productivity during the ‘work from home’ period.
Asana
Asana is a great tool to maintain an office-like environment at home. Asana allows you and your team to maintain their tasks, assign tasks to one another and see what other team members are working on. It helps in keeping all the work organized. A solo working person can even write their tasks down in notepad but for a team, it is not easy to keep track of all the work that is on progress when all the employees are working from home. So, Asana tool is more beneficial for teams.
Noisli
Unwanted noises can be a big distraction when you are trying to work. That is the reason why most of the offices maintain a quiet environment. But when you are working from outside the office, it is not possible to cut out all the noise around you. You may just have started concentrating on work, and some noise from the neighborhood with distract you in seconds. To avoid these distractions, music is the right way. But most of the songs have lyrics in them and that is distracting too.
In this case, Noisli is the tool for you. It has many white noises that can help you in concentrating on your work better. Some simple water, rain or wind track can easily create a soothing work environment. Also, if you are habitual of a particular sound in the background, like the noise of the fan, Noisli has those options too.
StayFocused
Internet is the biggest distraction in today’s time. And you cannot turn it off because how else will you do your work? StayFocused helps you with this problem. With StayFocus, which is a Google Chrome extension, you can block certain sites on your browser. This will help you in not opening those sites that distract you the most. Even if your mind will force you to open those sites, your browser will stop you from doing so.
So with StayFocused, you can easily avoid internet distractions and concentrate on your work better.
Calendar
Scheduling various meetings during ‘work from home’ period can be a big task. While in office, you can ask someone to remember your meetings. But when you are at home, you have to check your complete schedule whenever you plan a meeting with a different client. And as a human mind can easily make mistakes, so two of your important meetings might end up clashing.
The solution to this problem is Calendly. It frees you from the hectic of maintaining your schedule so you can focus better on work. You just need to enter your working hours and send the link of the app to all your clients, Calendly takes care of the rest. It tells your clients about the available slots in your schedule and they can choose one easily. So, you do not need to waste your time in checking the schedule frequently and sending multiple emails to fix a meeting time.
TopTracker
Losing track of time while working from home is the most common problem. The usual three-hour work might end up taking five hours at home. And you would not even realize where these two hours were wasted because you were actually working for the whole five hours. TopTracker helps you in keeping track of your productivity and regularly tells you the areas you can improve in. This helps you in increasing your productivity and finishing the work on time.
Conclusion
‘Work from home’ can be comfortable, but not easy. With these tools, you can make sure that you focus better on work and do not get distracted. One more thing you should keep in mind is to take breaks. It may seem like continuous working gives better results, but it does not. Taking small breaks every now and then helps in relaxing your mind and you can concentrate better on work.
