The secret to being productive & happy while working from home

Problem: You've read a bunch on productivity boost via remote work but all your assumptions are thrown out of the window. You're productive but only theoretically and if you haven't already, you might start having some fatigue.

Book recommendations:

1. Eat that frog.
2. Deep Work.
3. The power of the subconscious mind.
4. Why we sleep.

Sincere and organized people find it relatively much easier to work remote. This is because they've more control over their temptations. In a remote environment, you have a lot of freedom. You'll have to learn how to get rid of your temptations.

Let's look at how we can make sure we're not only productive at work but also avoiding any kind of fatigue while working from home.

1. Avoid STDs- All types (Pun intended)

STDs= Short Term Distractions. It's normal to feel that if your roommate is asking you to feed your dog or pass a glass of water, then this looks like a small task but only takes 2 minutes. Let us understand in-depth the effect of STDs on our productivity. At Pesto, we have a Productivity-Time graph which explains the effect of STDs on productivity.

We feel that doing any STDs only takes a small amount of time but in that case, you're making a big compromise with your productivity because you've limited attention span.

When you get disturbed, it takes a bit of time for you to reach your maximum productivity and STDs make it impossible for you to focus. The best way is to avoid all disturbances, notifications or STDs.

2. Todo list

I can't imagine myself doing any work at all without the todo list. I also feel that this has less to do with productivity and more to do with your own discipline, especially when you go remote.

When you're in office, your colleagues are aware of what you're working on but when you go remote they barely would have any idea.

We encourage people to use shared todo list app within their team and post about their work everyday on any team collaboration tool such as slack.

Self-accountability is good but it's hard to know when you go off track, with a team in the picture, there's an aspect of social accountability that'll keep you on your toes.

3. Fixed Schedule

WFH often becomes a pendulum that will oscillate between WAT (Work All the Time) and WAP (Work as You Please). It's extremely important for you to have a disciplined approach towards works when working from home. Now I'm not saying that you should work fewer hours et el, but you should be consciously investing your time.

Make google calendar your best friend and schedule even social time on it. Make sure that you're giving enough time zone overlap to your team and have enough time for yourself to create the right balance.

You'll know you've achieved a fixed schedule when you take shower at the same time every day. Pun intended.

4. Sleep Hours

Book Recommendation: Why we sleep

When you start working remotely, after a few days you'll start feeling sleepy all day. You might feel some fatigue and most probably you'll blame remote work for it.

Before you binge-watch something and screw up your sleep cycle, you should understand that your access to Bed is now increased by a mile. Save the travel time and invest that in your sleep.

• Get an eye mask. It's my all-time best ROI.
• Use blackout curtains & sleep in pitch dark if you're overlapping with a different timezone. Sunlight blocks the production of melatonin if you sleep during the early morning.
• Make sure you don't have Zn/Mg deficiency. This makes it hard for melatonin production in your body. 

5. Monitor your time

You won't realize where you've invested your time because in office, you had a habit of investing time in certain things. The environment was your reminder but while working from home, you don't have that.

Our recommendation would be to use Rescue Time efficiently. It's a tool that sits in the background and creates a detailed report around where you spend most of your time.

Most Importantly: It helps you block certain websites on which you might be investing your time subconsciously. Any sincere person wouldn't spend their company's time consciously, that's why it's important to fix loose ends.

Focus Time: Rescue Time has this feature in which you can create bursts of productivity in which this software blocks all distracting websites and helps you retain your focus to whatever you're working on.

6. Workout

One of the single most important thing amid the crisis. It was a game-changer when I tried first. After a week of work from home, you'll feel fatigued and coffee won't be able to fix that.

This is because your body is used to much better work out. Everyone makes this mistake of not doing any workout at all. I found 2 ways to keep myself fit and productive:

• Low-Intensity Aerobic Exercise
• Yoga
• Meditation

You don't need any equipment to learn or do any of the above. It has easy access to learn (Youtube Videos) and super effective in execution.

Apart from these, I've always loved reading books. When I went remote, I could read a lot more.

Now the important part: you'll read all this and won't be able to implement these unless you run your life scheduled on a google calendar. You must schedule a time to read, workout or even watch Netflix.

7. Protect Relationships

One of the biggest challenges of Remote work which we've learned about is loneliness. It is extremely real and you've to be very careful about not isolating yourself. (Introverts may disagree)

You've to make sure that in order to boost your productivity, you don't over-optimize your time and work all the time. When we're trying to keep pour family from disturbing us, sometimes that may bring friction and upset them.

Similarly, the relationships you had with your friends or colleagues in the office might suffer because you won't be having the side conversations over water coolers. What to do?

Schedule social time: Ask people in the office to get on a No-agenda call every day. At Pesto, we have a #no-agenda channel over slack which has a buddy call bot to pair 3 people every day at a fixed time randomly.

This helps create cohesiveness in the team and goes a long way in building relationships and protecting the company culture.

8. Scheduled Breaks

You'll go through a bunch of documentation over the internet and try to learn more about making yourself productive. What you'll miss is the part which we call life.

It's not really about how you spend your time but more about how you take care of your own mental health. If you're not investing time there consciously, you'll miss the walks you would take in the office to clear your head.

The compounding effect of this is pretty high. Schedule time for yourself to listen to music, chit chat with your family, or read books. Every day at 11 am I get my Dad on a call absorbing some sun and we both have some tea while he's in Varanasi and I'm in Delhi. We talk about anything except work.

Another thing I love doing is to work in sprints. I love music and books. So every 2 hours I take a 30 mins break for either of the two. I've grown up solving math along with music so if you're one of us, I'm sure you'll enjoy coding while being wired in too :)

9. Dress Up while working hours

When you've been working remotely for a while, it becomes easier to not care about what you wear or how you appear because you become a pro at consciously working from home.

However, when you're just getting started, it's important to help your brain adjust between work and non-work modes. Dressing up in the past seems to have helped some people to follow the discipline.

In India, most of us live with our families, in that case, it not only helps you but also others in the family adjust and know that you're in the work zone.

I'm not sure how your dog would react but pretty sure others would understand that they're supposed to give you space in your work time.

If this was helpful, please do let me know, I'll try my best to constantly share more things that we've learned over the last couple of years here. Share with others and be quarantined. :)