Working from Home? Treat Your Brain Like Pavlov’s Dogs
Today’s today is a quick tip for making work from home life easier. It’s hard to work from home, especially when you have kids around, messes everywhere, and a beckoning refrigerator. This is why it’s so important, for me, to have signals that put my brain into work mode. Basically, I treat myself like Pavlov’s dogs, encouraging my brain to go into work mode under certain circumstances. This is even more critical if you, like me, don’t really have space for a “designated workplace” in your home. I have a variety of mental and physical signals: tea, lighting, and an email-answering routine (more on that in later posts).
But here’s my most important signal, and one that gets me through everyday:
Headphones!
For the past 5+ years I’ve been using over-the-ear headphones to put myself in “work mode.” Here’s the key, though, don’t plug them in. Just slip on your headphones, unplugged or disconnected from bluetooth. This trains your brain to go into “work mode,” and for me, it’s been a central part of my work-from-home strategy.
My headphones aren’t noise-cancelling, but they are a nice, noise-muffling set given to me by a friend. If you’re going to make one work-from-home purchase, this is the one I’d recommend (besides a functioning computer).
Do it!
