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09 Oct

Two methods for keeping the tempo up when working from home


Datum: 2024-10-09 09:04
A woman is sitting at a desk, holding her forehead with a tired expression in front of a computer.

Work­ing from home is some­thing very dif­fer­ent from work­ing at the office. For some, it is quite nice to for once be all alone and be in full con­trol of what would nor­mal­ly inter­rupt and dis­turb your flow. To oth­ers (or to the same peo­ple, but in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances), it is dif­fi­cult to keep the tem­po up and at their usu­al pace.

It can be hard since you have dif­fi­cult tasks, real­ly tedious tasks, or tasks that are relat­ed to dis­com­fort or unpleas­ant some­how. When that is the case, there are sud­den­ly loads of oth­er things attract­ing your atten­tion — espe­cial­ly the fun and relax­ing things you usu­al­ly do at home. Because that is where we are — at home — where we are used to being at our own leisure and able to do what we feel like.


For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the Done!” pod­cast:


On and off in an order­ly fashion

My work­ing-from-home is usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to the time I have spent writ­ing books and from these expe­ri­ences, I can def­i­nite­ly relate to how slow and unfo­cused work­ing from home can be. Con­sid­er­ing how at ease I feel at my office (where I work alone with­out col­leagues), one might won­der if I ever real­ly work in any­thing but a home-like envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er, when I trav­el (which I do a lot) I cer­tain­ly work in the midst of lots of peo­ple in a very open and exposed man­ner, far away from the soli­tude by my desk.

When I have found it hard to keep up the pace and still have had to get things done through­out the years, the fol­low­ing two work meth­ods where you work in inter­vals have helped me great­ly. Allow me to share them with you.

Do this

If you need to keep up the pace whilst work­ing in gen­er­al, use the Pomodoro-method.

  • The Pomodoro tech­nique uses 25-minute inter­vals dur­ing which you work on either a spe­cif­ic, con­scious­ly cho­sen task or any­thing that is before you, rest for 5 min­utes, and then repeat this pat­tern over and over again. Set an alarm for 25 min­utes, work until it goes off, set the alarm for 5 min­utes, and rest. Every oth­er hour you give your­self a break for 15 min­utes instead so that you get to relax ful­ly before get­ting back to work. The method got its name from the Ital­ian who invent­ed it and the fact that the egg timer he used was shaped like a plas­tic toma­to (since pomodoro” means toma­to in Italian).

If you are tru­ly strug­gling to get mov­ing, keep get­ting dis­tract­ed and your mind wan­ders off” to all kinds of oth­er things except what you actu­al­ly need to focus on, then work accord­ing to the for­mu­la (10+25.

  • I learned the (10+2)x5-method on the blog Life­hack­er many years ago. Using this method, you work on the tedious task for 10 min­utes (you can do it!) and then rest for 2 min­utes. Loop this 5 times and you will have worked for 50 min­utes and had 10 min­utes rest for an hour. This method has had a way of get­ting me going” when I have found it hard to. After three loops I usu­al­ly do not want to stop and before I know it, I am done with the whole task. Piece of cake.

More of what you do, when you do it

If you use one of these meth­ods when work­ing from home and are find­ing it chal­leng­ing to do so, you will prob­a­bly get mov­ing faster and soon be up to the speed you usu­al­ly are when at work, even if you do not have col­leagues around to be stim­u­lat­ed by. You can get more work done in the time des­ig­nat­ed for work, which means you can let go of work com­plete­ly once you have fin­ished for the day and focus only on that and those you love.

What’s your way?

Do you have a trick or method that keeps the steam up when work­ing from home? Or is this not even an issue for you? Feel free to share your thoughts in an email to me!

(By the way, have you fig­ured out how to clear­ly show your col­leagues that you intend to work from home?)


There's so much more where this came from!

A young woman with glasses and headphones is looking thoughtfully out of a window.

If you want more tips on how to create good structure at work, there are many ways to get that from me - in podcasts, videos, books, talks and other formats.

Yes, I want more tips!