[A collaboration post – all thoughts are my own.]

6 Easy Ways to Avoid Procrastination

Well, we already talk a lot about freelancing in my blog and I enjoy it so much because working from home is a way of spending more time with my family and escaping the hell of having a boss watching your work.

Many assume that a freelancing job can only bring positive change. Who wouldn’t want to work on their own schedule and avoid the heavy traffic of a commute? However, once you begin to work from home, you can see that it’s a bit different and that procrastination at work can easily take over.

Procrastination is a major cause of concern for everyone who works from home. I find myself flipping from site to site, one YouTube video to another, and watching countless movies that end up wasting hours of time and affecting my productivity level. It’s not that people lack enthusiasm or motivation. It’s simply that the pull of distractions is quite strong, and many aren’t prepared to face them immediately.

Fortunately, most of the major problems with productivity while working from home have to do with procrastination and distractions, which have some simple remedies if you’re willing to work on them. Here are some tips to help you stay on track and avoid procrastinating when you work from home.

Stop Comparing Yourself

As a blogger, it’s easy to compare my result to others. At the beginning of 2021, I feel that I need to stop caring about others’ numbers – views, DA, income, etc. It’s easy to feel disappointed and put off a lot of work. This is very common in the blogging community.

As time goes by, I begin to value only the positive stuff and feed my mind with things that matter. I look back at why I started blogging and try to be more kind to myself. No one knows what behind the scenes. It’s important to appreciate every little step you take daily and stop beating yourself over other people’s results.

Turn Off Social Media Notification

Sometimes, I’m so proud of myself because I’m the type of person who doesn’t give a d*mn about social media. I think it’s because of the introverted side of myself that I don’t bother myself about what people posted on social media and don’t endlessly scroll social media during working hours (my daily average is around an hour for Instagram).

For me, I always set my phone on silent (vibrate) mode every day and it’s already been more than 6-7 years that I never turn on the sound mode. When you set out to work, ensure your smartphone is set to do not disturb mode so those notifications don’t steal your attention when you’re focused on your task.

Create A Home Office

I have always wanted to have a home office. That’s my dream when I have my own house in the future! For now, I just use a corner of the bedroom that has enough light during the day. Because I’m a night owl, I make sure to have appropriate lighting. If you have a spare room, you can start by limiting the comforts of home by turning the room into a small office.

Before heading into your home office, put a bottle of water and a small snack on the desk so you won’t have to get up when you get hungry. I love snacking so I put a lot of choco biscuits on my desk. Make sure you have a charger for both your computer and smartphone so you won’t have to go searching for them later. Make sure everything is clean and ready before you turn on the computer.

Create Daily Goals

To avoid procrastination when working from home, I always make sure to set daily goals. My daily goal as a translator is to translate at least 1,500 words per day for one project. For subtitling service, my capacity is 20-30 minutes of video per day. I personally don’t take projects that require me to time code because time-coding is tedious and time-consuming. If you work from home, it would be great to create daily goals and it would be nice to not go over your daily capacity so that the quality is guaranteed.

Avoid Multi-Tasking

Some people are really good with multi-tasking and I admire them so much. However, that’s not the case for me, even when I wish I can work on many tasks at once. Rather than doing several things at the same time, I split them based on their priority.

I learn to finish up one task before jumping to another. For example, when I know I have a translation project with 5 days deadline, I will focus my morning time to finish 1,000 words. Then in the afternoon, I will write 600+ words for my blog. Next, in the evening I continue to translate another 500 – 600 words. So far, I use this method so I won’t burn out myself and avoid procrastination.

Prioritize Your Tasks

Prioritization looks different for everyone. Some freelance work won’t have deadlines, so staying on task can be even more difficult. On a certain day, I prioritize my translation assignments over my blogging task because I can delay publishing my article but not with translating 1,000 words in a day. Therefore, figuring out which things are most important throughout the day is the key. Once you’re able to prioritize your tasks, you’ll see how effectively things get done and will be able to avoid procrastination.

As you can see, you are in charge to avoid procrastination from working at home. It’s important to get started with some of the above tips to keep you on track. As time goes by, you’ll find that you’re able to be more productive and place your mental health above others.

I wonder what is the biggest distraction you have? And what is your key to avoiding procrastination, especially when working from home? I’d like to know your thoughts about this below!