Academic Productivity

The last week or two has seen some serious winter weather here in the UK. Schools have been cancelled, transport delayed, idiots arrested for driving on frozen canals, and all those other things you would typically associate with places like Canada, not the balmy UK. (No, on second thought, I take back that thing about the canals. We don’t do that in Canada, unless you count this).

Anyway, the weather’s meant that a lot of us have started 2010 by working from home. Timely as always, the Guardian published a small article with some helpful tips for those new to home working. As someone who has worked from home for the past two years, I’d say the basic advice is pretty sound and worth repeating here:

1. Have a work space. Prepare a clear work space so that you can mentally, if not physically, separate home and work life. If you have a spare room to use as a home office, great; if not, clear off the kitchen table and do your best.
2. Don’t forget to take regular breaks. It can sometimes feel like you need to prove constantly that you are at your desk working, but remember: it’s very rare that an entire workday at the office would be spent staring at your computer. So listen to the radio, go for a run, do whatever you like: it’s okay to take a break now and then.
3. Be clear about what you’re working on. This is mainly a due diligence tip for those who might not normally work from home and need to demonstrate that they haven’t been wasting their time. But it’s good general advice too. Even if you are a seasoned home worker, it’s always useful to clearly set out what you hope to accomplish during a day. This is especially important for long stretches of home work when it’s all too easy to procrastinate from day to day.

One of the interviewees in the article suggests that people “stick to the work pattern they adopt at the office” and this is a good take-away message. Home work really is like working from the office, with some pros and some cons. In the past, I thought there might be more pros, like listening to music or doing a bit of laundry, but most of the time that doesn’t work. You need to have enough discipline to avoid those distractions and focus on the job at hand. This can be difficult at first but ultimately, it’s worthwhile. Once you get used to the monastic life, you may actually find that you get more done at home as there is very little outside distraction (compared with an open-plan office).

Anyone else worked from home recently? What tips do you have?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Multitasking, Time management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.