How to stay Motivated While Working from Home

Motivation can sometimes be a hard characteristic to come by, especially when working from home during quarantine. It can get really challenging, so is easy to start putting things off for later and go on a path of procrastination. So how can you stay motivated while working from home, with your kids, partner or pets? Of course, you already been told to have a dedicated workspace, create a schedule, to stay away of limitation and distractions and the lists goes on. Well, for me all of those didn’t work as planned so I had to look further than that. I realised, that the first step was really to identify which were my motivation killers while trying to manage two remote jobs at the same time.

Here are the top four motivation problems that I discovered:

1. Lack of Communication

If lack of motivation were a disease for remote workers, then lack of communication would be the main symptom. By not communicating well with your remote colleagues, you’re risking to jeoperdise the end goal your team has to achieve. Lack of communication can lead to procrastination if it’s not handled properly. Make sure you check in with your remote manager to verify if you understand yours tasks, both day-to-day and overall.

2. Procrastination

With poor communication, procrastination can quickly follow when working from home. This could be simply because you, as a remote worker,. may not understand your tasks and use your frustration as a reason to procrastinate. However, not to throw you completely under the bus, procrastination may be born entirely from the remote worker. If you work better with accountability, try using an app such as Focusmate.

3. Isolation when Working from Home in Quarantine

According to my 7th-grade social studies teacher, humans are social creatures. We are often motivated by each other in the need to show off, do as well, or even keep up. This can be a key motivator in an office environment but is sadly lacking for remote workers. Senior career writer at FlexJobs, Rachel Jay observed: “A lack of engagement can lead to isolation and loneliness, a lack of passion for the company’s vision or goals, and feeling unhappy and unappreciated.” So try to engage with your colleagues, set up a virtual coffe chat hour so you get a chance to catch up and connect with your team, on topics non work related.

4. Undervalued

For us, people working from home there’s a big danger of feeling undervalued. Managers can sometimes fall into the trap of being so caught up with the needs of in-house staff, they may neglect to check on their remote employees. Which may lead to us feeling undervalued and therefore, we might start to procrastinbate if we feel our work is not valued. I’m not saying is the manager’s fault, but if you’re feeling that way, make sure to schedule a one on one call and share your feelings; your manager will appreciate it.

People develop motivation in many different ways when working from home. It’s up to you to discover what’s holding you back, and take action into fixing it. Either is something you can solve on your own, or need asisstance fromy our remote colleagues or manager, there is a solution to stay motivated while working from home.