I’m working from home for over 3 years now. I worked in an office environment 9 years before that and enjoyed especially the company of self-minded and creative colleagues around me. So I’ve seen both scenarios lately and still decided to keep my home-office for the time being. Here are the most important insights I made to make working from home really work out for you…
Still looking back at my last year and inspired by a post by Manal Ghosain, I wanted to reflect on why I wasn’t fully happy with my personal productivity last year. I think it can be really revealing to ask deep questions about what I did in the past. My goal is always to get new insights and to profit from them now and in the future. And I think there are patterns that apply to all of us.
Not being as productive as I could comes down to not spending my time where I should, according to my set priorities.
Why am I doing that? Because I lack self-discipline. It means that still I’m saying „yes“ to things that are not important.
The time right now is among my personal most enjoyable times of the year. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day is the perfect time to really reflect back on the last 12 month and then go ahead and plan next year.
And in fact, if you haven’t done a yearly plan so far, I would highly recommend that you start doing this review & planning process now for this and the coming year. You will be amazed at what this reviewing & planning can do to your overall sense of direction and practical achievement. It will take under 1 hour and it will be way worth it.
For me, this process is one of the biggest sources for what I would call my personal successes. It is a 2 step process of I. Reviewing and II. Planning.
For a while now I try to keep things simple. That means I try to avoid unnecessary additional overhead to what I do, have or I’m in relationship with. I feel like this is one of the very best productivity habits to have. It takes a lot of intelligence to reach that essential state from where things just flow. But I noticed that in order to build the simplicity habit, you have to develop one particular skill.
It’s a very common thing: You set out some nice plans and started very motivated with something that seemed so important to you at the time. But then, somehow, it wears off. The initial drive is gone, things seem to be tough again, it’s no fun anymore. And somehow it doesn’t look so interesting anymore, anyway. What happened? The simple answer: You didn’t follow through. But why?