How To Cre­ate A Pro­duc­tiv­ity Oa­sis For Work At Home Writers

Work at home writ­ers may have the lux­ury of work­ing from home, but writ­ing at home can also be dif­fi­cult due to all the distractions.

In­stead of pop­ping open your lap­top and work­ing while still sit­ting up in bed, it’s im­por­tant that work at home writ­ers cre­ate a pro­duc­tiv­ity oa­sis to keep them on schedule.

So how ex­actly can work at home writ­ers cre­ate a pro­duc­tiv­ity oa­sis? By us­ing the fol­low­ing tips.

Cre­ate an office.

The first thing you ab­solutely must do is give your­self a des­ig­nated work­ing area, and no, your bed can’t count.

You need to find a nice quiet place in your home that will al­low you to be com­fort­able and will be quiet enough for you to write with­out dis­trac­tion. This room should be away from your kids, away from the kitchen and away from the tele­vi­sion, as those are the most dis­tract­ing as­pects of any home.

In­vest in er­gonomic furniture.

You should also in­vest in er­gonomic fur­ni­ture for your of­fice. Er­gonomic desks, chairs, key­boards and mouse pads are great ways to keep you com­fort­able while you work.

Since you spend a great deal of time at a com­puter, it’s im­por­tant that you avoid in­jury, such as carpal tun­nel syn­drome, and us­ing er­gonomic of­fice fur­ni­ture can help.

Cre­ate schedules.

The best way to stay on track is to cre­ate sched­ules, cal­en­dars or to-do lists to help you know ex­actly what you need to get done and when. You can use cal­en­dars or lists on your com­puter, or you can even down­load apps to your mo­bile de­vices to help keep you on track.

Every night, write your list of what ab­solutely needs to get done the fol­low­ing day, and then cre­ate your sched­ule to al­low you to com­plete your list.

Use spelling and gram­mar checkers.

When your work is gram­mat­i­cally cor­rect and er­ror free, it elim­i­nates the need for rewrites.

This is why it’s ex­tremely im­por­tant that you in­vest in a solid spelling and gram­mar checker, such as Gram­marly gram­mar check tool. While the spelling and gram­mar check­ers on your word proces­sor can help, third-party spelling and gram­mar check­ers like Gram­marly have a larger li­brary and more knowl­edge about proper spelling and gram­mar, help­ing to find and fix more er­rors. Plus, tools like Gram­marly will also give you sug­ges­tions on how to im­prove your writing.

When you use these tools, your writ­ing will be bet­ter, which will help you be more pro­duc­tive be­cause you will spend less time on ed­its.

In­vest in Cold Turkey or Self Control.

Al­though you may have taken the time to elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions around your home of­fice, your com­puter pro­vides an­other set of dis­trac­tions. You may eas­ily find your­self trav­el­ing to Face­book, Pin­ter­est, or other web­sites in­stead of work­ing, and that can cause you to stop be­ing so productive.

Cold Turkey is a web­site ded­i­cated to keep­ing you from wan­der­ing to other web­sites while you’re sup­posed to be work­ing, but it only works for Win­dows users. If you’re run­ning a Mac, you can use Self Con­trol. These are great ways to keep you on track and productive.

[rms] Ralf’s com­ment: I love the rec­om­men­da­tion of Cold Turkey. Check­ing email and brows­ing my so­cial me­dia ac­counts is de­finetely the num­ber one pro­duc­tiv­ity killer for me. I’m down­load­ing Cold Turkey right now!