WFH Tips for Busy People: Creating Focus

The pace and sheer variety of ways communication happens these days can make staying focused and on task a challenge.  I have found a few solutions along the way.  Whether you WFH, work at least occasionally in a shared work space or open floor plan or even if you just have a lot of people trying to talk to you all the time, here are two of my favorite focus tips.

Canceling Noise. 

I absolutely cannot survive without noise canceling headphones. I work from my kitchen and there are times that the other humans who live here need snacks. My headphones allow us all to ignore each other appropriately! They are also useful when I hunker down at my local coffee shop.  They were standard issue for the two “open floor plan” start-ups I worked for. I still don’t know if handing out 'cancellers' to new employees was a classy, self-aware move or a red flag but either way they were critical to productivity in those noisy offices!

Creating Prompts. 

I rely heavily on my phone to keep me on track. I use the phone alarm to make sure I don’t miss meetings or go over a time block. Sometimes it's because I’m really in a flow working on a document or other times I’m folding tiny socks but either way those alarms have kept me from being late to client meetings more times than I should probably admit. It's loosely in the spirit of The Pomodoro Method which seems to be popular again. I also religiously set Do Not Disturb Mode— well, when I don’t want to be disturbed.

Photo by Rafay Ansari on Unsplash