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How to create a home office routine that sticks

A home office routine is exactly what we need to keep our work schedule on track. A daily routine for working from home removes the pressure of always having to find motivation to stay focused on work.

When you find yourself searching for home office motivation is when you’re actually procrastinating.

Home office routine – the best way to stick to your work

A home office routine removes the need for motivation, because it can be molded over time into the Holy Grail of work performance.

Once you know the difference between home office motivation and home office discipline, creating a routine of working from home is a matter of learning habits and then sticking to new behaviours.

Routines are explained in the dictionary as “a sequence of actions regularly followed”. According to Nir Eyal, the author of best-selling books like “Hooked” and “Indistractable”, in order to create a new routine, we must first start with a habit.

The difference between habits and routines

Understanding there is a difference between habits and routines is extremely important. Nir Eyal explains how “habits are a type of routine, but not all routines become habits.” In short, “unlike a routine, which feels uncomfortable to do, in the case of a habit, not doing a behavior feels bad.”

Then how do we create a home office routine that sticks?

“As long as we know the difference between a habit (a behavior done with little or no thought) and a routine (a series of actions regularly followed) we can plan accordingly and not be disappointed”, Nir Eyal continues.

There are three main keys that unlock home office routines that stick:

1. Schedule the time

Schedule your working hours and make them non-negociable. This is the first step in ensuring you create an internal environment suited for working from home. It’s very important not only to plan what you are going to do but also when you plan to do it.

2. Push through discomfort

When you first implement your new work from home schedule, expect discomfort. Expect it and work through it. Easier said than done? There’s an antidote to that – a shift in perspective. Learning to love the process is based on the way you see things. So imagining a different scenario for your working hours might just do the trick.

3. Get into flow

Flow is a powerful, almost addictive state that we find ourselves in whenever we are highly focused on a task. From high-performance athlets to prolific writers and everyone focused in between, people who use flow states are actually hacking their brains and bodies to perform on a higher level in their chosen domain.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow” is where you will find more information on how to get into this optimal performance state.

Using the right information as a tool to mold and shape your own behaviour proves not only helpful, but also keeps you away from information overload. Don’t just gather, rather use the information you seek out to enhance your work from home performance. This kind of mindset will spill over into other areas of your life once you see how much of a difference it makes.

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