It’s the start of a new week. Are you organised and ready for the next seven days? In this post I’m going to share what I do to give myself the best possible start to the week. Here are five tips for how to be productive at home.

Tip #1 – Track Your Time

For me, a good week begins on Sunday evening. I learned a technique called Calendar Blocking from YouTuber Amy Landino, and I find it really helps me track my time. It also ensures that I am making time for the important things. I literally schedule everything. Mealtimes, exercise classes/gym workouts, harp practice, admin (emails, working on my website etc.), as well as chill time in the evening and what time I start getting ready for bed. Obviously appointments, students and gigs are all on there to begin with. For me, a to-do list is pretty much useless unless I actually put those things on my calendar and plan a time for them.

When you see all the hours of the day laid out in front of you, you quickly realise you probably do have time to get most things done. The trick is to do just one thing at a time, we get more done overall. Trust me.

Personally, I use my google calendar, because that way it’s easy to change things around. It automatically syncs with Apple ical that I use on my laptop, phone and iPad. You may prefer a paper schedule (reminder: it’s 2022) but do whatever works for you.

Tip #2 – Get Up Early, ready for a productive day at home

My aim is to get up at 7:30am every weekday. I have tried many, many ways of doing this (I love my sleep) but currently what seems to be working is to have my Lumie light up ready for 7am, and to have my phone alarm go off at 7:30am. Rest is just so important and I do prioritise sleep. I will admit to often – ok every day – having a cup of tea in bed before getting up and on with the day. We all need to find little pockets of our schedules for little treats and things we enjoy, otherwise – what’s the point?

The important thing is, I’m waking up at the same time each day. I’m allowing my body to get into the rhythm of this schedule because I know that mornings are my most productive time.

Tip #3 – Organise your tasks with intention

My mornings are 100% more productive than my afternoons, they just are.

So for me, I know I need to maximise this time and use it for the more mentally taxing tasks. I’m writing this very blog at 9:30am. Examples of good morning tasks would be:

1. Practising your instrument
2. Creating Content
3. Exercising
4. Making future plans and taking steps towards them

Not-so-good morning tasks would be:

1. Checking emails
2. Housework, which doesn’t require much mental energy and can be done later
3. Contracts, Invoices and other admin
4. Taking calls
5. Checking bank balances (too depressing potentially anxiety-inducing)

I know sometimes we can’t have the perfect day and sometimes we need to reply to emails first thing. But in an ideal scenario, anything where your time is going to be governed by someone else should take place after you’ve spent the morning on your own thing. What’s the point of learning how to be productive at home when we don’t use that productivity to work towards our most important goals?

Tip #4 – Decide when to stop for the day, and actually stop.

When you often work from home, as I do, your work is never ‘done’, there’s always more you can do. But for our own mental health it’s important to have some down time.  Schedule it in and you’ll feel fabulous when you reach ‘Chill Time’ and you know you’ve worked hard and have earned a rest.

I have tried scheduling every single day, seven days a week, and at the moment that is simply not sustainable for me. It’s easy to end up falling off the wagon completely and binging on Making a Murderer at 2pm during the week. Learning how to be productive at home means you have sustainable habits that you can do all the time. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Calendar Blocking Monday-Friday is a good compromise for me and means that I can really relax at the weekend (often just in time for that week’s gig!) but you know what I mean, I’m not on the hamster wheel of practice and admin like I am on weekdays.

Another point on this, when it is chill time, for heaven’s sake don’t start checking emails on your phone. That’s not true down time and you won’t feel refreshed and ready to jump back in the next time your calendar says ‘admin’. Occupy yourself with something completely different. Cooking, reading, netflix, whatever, just try not to have your phone alerting you for work stuff.

Tip #5 – limit social media to be truly productive at home

This is a huge secret when it comes down to how to be productive at home. Quitting social media will probably have an article all of its own at some point. Take those social media apps off your phone and stand back in amazement at how much more you get done.

I am currently doing this and it honestly makes me not want to go back to Facebook or Instagram (I already deleted TikTok and Twitter). Bear in mind that I am saying this as a musician, and people love to tell us how important social media is to ‘get our names out there’ – out where, exactly?

I’d rather not be on there, have the time to practice, make sure my website is boom ting and get work that way. Not to mention the mental health issues social media creates. The way it is threatening our very democracy and putting young people in danger from predators and online bullying is quite frankly disturbing.

So those are my five tips that I personally try to use to have my most productive day possible. Learning how to be productive at home will be different for everyone, try different things and see what works for you.

I hope you find these tips helpful, let me know if you decide to try any of them out and how you get on. I wish I had had these tips when I was in college and freshly graduated. Maybe I wasn’t ready to properly knuckle down and go after the life that I want.

I am now. Are you?
A xx