Top 10 working from home distractions

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Sunshine/Snow fall

Back in February, most of us ended up working from home when almost unheard of snow levels hit the suburbs and the city of London. How many of you ended up in the garden making snowmen or throwing snowballs at the next door neighbour though?

With summer approaching the same temptation is there to laze in the garden and spend your day maximising your tan. You could always work outside – as long as your Wi-Fi stretches. Don’t long for the sunshine and get distracted from work, sit in your garden and enjoy the warmth but keep to the task at hand. Remember the pub garden will still be there at 5pm when you knock off.

Mobiles

At work you tend to behave yourself, right? The mobile is on silent, you take calls outside and you only text back when you have to without distracting anyone else. Do this at home. Your friends asking you what you are up to tonight or your kids wanting to know what’s for dinner can wait until you take a break or finish work. If you phone is constantly going off it will again make you keep stop starting with your work and you’ll either make mistakes or not get it finished in time.

Clocking off

It is always good to put in the extra hours to get your work done but when you are at home the key is learning to separate home life and work life. If you have managed to get away from the distractions listed here reward yourself by finishing work when you should. The temptation is just to stay working but you will be much more productive if you close up shop for the day and go back to your work fresh in the morning. Don’t knock off early, just take the advantage that at the end of the working day you are already in the comfort of your home without a commute.

Don’t let these distractions put you off though. Working from home can be beneficial to both employer and employee.

Andrew Brown, sales manager of of email archiving specialist C2C, is all for working from home. “Working from home often raises eyebrows in some corporates. In fact, it shouldn't. Sure there are distractions provided in the home environment; but these are outweighed by the benefits,” he told IT PRO.

He added: “Putting the petrol guzzling, stressful and long commute into the office aside, there are actually less distractions at home to enable employees to work smarter. Employees tend to be less involved in office gossip; take shorter breaks for lunch and coffees and are not drawn into meetings for the sake of meetings.

“In my experience working from home means you work smarter - setting achievable targets for the day and delivering on them.”

You do need to show how productive you can be out of the office though so good luck resisting the distractions and make the most of National Work from Home day.

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