Finding Focus – 5 Surprising Tools To Improve Your Mental Clarity When Working from Home
Working from home can be fantastic for your work-life balance. However, the home can also be a massive distraction trap. If you’ve been struggling to find focus while working remotely, the following five tools should help:
5 tools that are helping you to get Focus while working at home
1. Your sense of smell
The addition of an essential oil aromatherapy diffuser to your workspace can do more than just fill the air with a pleasing aroma. By using the best essential oil diffusers in 2023 like peppermint, eucalyptus, or anything in the citrus family, you can wake up your body, clear out any brain fog, and inspire yourself to sit down and focus. In addition to the immediate effects of the scents themselves, this habit will compound over time. You will soon have conditioned yourself to want to work when you smell these aromas.
2. Blocking tools
The Internet is an essential tool for most home-based workers. However, it’s also packed full of distractions like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, and the vast open plains of search engine exploration.
Even if you manage to resist wasting work time on digital distractions, the willpower it takes to stay away may be draining energy that could be used to power up your motivation to work. With this in mind, it can be helpful to employ a blocking app or distraction-canceling browser add-on.
Tools like this allow you to build a custom list of sites that you can block to suit your work schedule. You may be surprised at how much focus you regain from the simple act of putting distractible browsing out of reach.
3. Sound design
Intrusive sounds are huge distraction factors for remote workers. If your attention is constantly being pulled away from work by noisy neighbors, barking dogs, or traffic, your ability to focus will diminish.
You have a few options for perfecting your home office soundscape. If you find earplugs comfortable, this can be a simple solution. Alternatively, a good quality set of snug-fitting headphones will allow you to play your favorite music or some soothing white noise.
A simple surround-sound speaker arrangement is also easier and cheaper to set up than you might imagine. This will allow you to fill your space with soothing tunes or nature sounds, creating the perfect environment in which to find focus.
4. A journal and to-do list
Intrusive thoughts about dramas with your partner plans with friends, or grocery items you need to stock up on can be massive focus killers for remote workers. To combat this, it’s worth adding a journal and a to-do list to your morning routine.
Before you sit down to work, spend a few minutes journaling about any personal issues that are on your mind. After this, list out all the things you need to get done around the house. With everything out of your head and on paper, your mind will be free and clear to focus on work until it’s time to clock off.
5. A daily planner
It’s hard to find focus when your brain doesn’t know what you want it to be focusing on. At the end of each workday, it’s worth dedicating 15 minutes to writing out your plan for the next day. Set out all the tasks you wish to get done in order of importance. By creating your work plan at the end of the day rather than in the morning, you set yourself up to be focused from the moment you sit down at your desk.
Working from home comes with as many benefits as challenges. However, you can use the tools above to tip the balance in your favor.
