1. Plan
Planning in advance helps limit distractions and increases focus when it's time to work. We suggest allocating 30 mins to an hour to plan your week ahead. Schedule your weekly workouts, meals, house chores and other activities in your diary.
Our key tips are to take time for yourself and try and stick to a routine. This will also give you an opportunity to come up with some great ideas for your evenings or weekends. Perhaps try a new recipe, pick up a new book, approach a thousand piece puzzle or plant a little herb garden. If you can plan in advance, when the time comes you will have everything you need for your activity.
Productivity is all about balance, so that when you sit down to start work you have the energy to kick some goals!
2. Prepare
Spend time preparing nourishing meals for the week. Being limited in the frequency that we would normally visit grocery stores can also be an opportunity to plan your meals ahead of time. So when it is time for your meal or snack you can just sit down, de-stress and consume your meal mindfully.
There are many benefits in consuming your food mindfully, which include:
- Better digestion
- Greater satisfaction
- Decrease food cravings
- Decreases anxiety
Some of our favourite snacks and meals this week are:
- Dips and crudités, you can pre-prepare your vegetables with either a homemade dip or your favourite store bought one.
- Homemade lemon and ginger tea; a wedge of lemon and some finely chopped ginger with boiling water. Add a little bit of honey to sweeten.
- Roasted cauliflower. This is great mixed in with salad, steamed vegetables, pulses and/or grains and a tahini dressing. Equally as good served cold as it is hot!
- Stewed fruit is really easy to make and delicious with your breakfast muesli and yoghurt, or even an afternoon pick me up.
- It's also the perfect time to pull out the slow cooker! Not only will your meal be ready when you are, but the smells wafting through the house will be amazing!
Top tip: Chop up your fresh vegetables and freeze them. You can prepare sweet potato chips that you can toss in the oven when you're ready, and the bonus is your fresh vegetables won't go off before you can eat them.
3. Communicate
Share your weekly activities with your family, housemates and friends over dinner or a glass of wine (even if it does have to be virtual).
This will develop an understanding of everyone's schedule to avoid distractions and to be mindful not to distract each other.
It might also help to create boundaries and zones at home to define working spaces. Setting up your work zone to suit your daily tasks will not only physically define when you're working, but also will help others identify when not to disturb you.
You might also need to define boundaries with your friends that aren't keeping normal work hours. Just set a friendly quick response in your phone to let them know that you are working but you'll call them at lunch time or when you've finished work.
4. Break Up The Day
Change up your day from sitting down and working from 9am - 5pm to incorporate more activities to keep you motivated.
Every few hours plan to do an activity, whether this is pausing your work and going for a walk, making a coffee, doing some stretching, meditation or simply opening the windows and letting some fresh air in the house. If you can, sit outside and have a snack or a cup of tea, we guarantee you will come back feeling refreshed.
You might even find it rewarding to conquer a load of washing or refold your t-shirt drawer.
5. Be comfortable
Utilise this time at home and indulge in your favourite comfortable organic cotton basics and some self care.
Being home gives us an opportunity to start a good skin care routine, put on a hair mask or unwind by having a bath.
The bonus of working from home is that you don't need to wear structured clothes to work everyday. You can wear your favourite lounge pants and a comfortable tee.
If you have a video conference, just pop a blazer or jacket over the top!
Being comfortable and feeling good about yourself creates the perfect balance for increasing your productivity!
We would love to hear your top tips for productivity! Please share your weekly plan, your favourite recipes or your Cloth & Co. working from home outfit with us on instagram and tag us @clothandco
Cloth & Co. x