Best 3 tips to get motivated to work from home

If only you could get motivated to work from home, then:

• You’d get more things done. Yay for productivity!
• You’d be independent of weather conditions. Snowing or raining, you can cozily stay inside and do your thing.
• You’d skip the unnecessary driving. You can spend that time doing more work, or just having fun and enjoying your family!

Yet, when at home, despite your best intentions, you’re finding yourself distracted, or just too lazy to do what you said you’d do. Whether that is exercise, checking e-mails, or completing that final report for many of us our home is a place of distractions.

I used to feel exactly like that. I had to spend an extra 25 min going back and forth to the gym in order to exercise – I just couldn’t get motivated to do it at home. I found focusing easier when I was at the library than when I was at home, so I’d always try to get out to get things done.

After plenty of trial and error, and years of experimenting, I cracked the home productivity code. I now do 100% of my work at home, and I often skip the gym in order to exercise from home.

It’s just so easy to break promises we make to ourselves. It’s so easy to lay on the couch and watch a movie instead of using our laptop and being productive. It’s so easy to distract ourselves on social media, indulge in “screen sucking”, and skip the workout we said we’d do.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t seem you are doomed to a life of being lazy at home. You can change. If I could do it, you can do it too. Here are my best tips to get motivated to work from home.

So here are the 3 boundaries that prevent you from getting things done, and how to get motivated to work from home.

1. To break your current distracting home habits, build new ones.

Most of us are either lazy or just distracted when at home. What we don’t realize is this behavior is now a habit.

Right now your current habit might be to spend time with your family when at home.

Or, maybe you have the habit of just doing whatever when at home – which includes Facebook and all the other distractions our modern world offers.

Now that’s normal. This is our home after all! It’s where we’re supposed to have family time, watch TV, and just chill.

What you may not realize is just how powerful those habits are. By definition, habits come naturally for us. Just like you don’t need to think about wearing your seat-belt when getting in the car, and you “just do it”, you also just naturally turn on the TV.

Actually stopping yourself from wearing your seat-belt when getting in the car would be hard – you’d have to think about it, plan it, etc. Now compare this with watching TV at home. You have to really TRY if you want to override this established habit.

Now getting motivated to work seems like a mountain you don’t want to climb. Getting yourself off the couch is just THAT hard.

Watch the video to learn how to keep your lovely current home habits, without letting them take you away from your promises you make to yourself.

2. Create firm boundaries to block distractions.

Your kids asking for you when you’re supposed to get these two sets of abs…doesn’t help you get your workout done.

Facebook popping notifications about the photo you were tagged in is an easy distraction away from your work, and “checking this one photo” can just as easily turn into a 30 min unplanned “break”.

Or, maybe you never get to start working in the first place!

Watch the video to learn how to best deal with distractions.

3. Stop going big. Go home instead.

The Nr. #1 mistake people make when creating new habits, including learning to work from home, is thinking they can just start with a “normal” quantity.

So if you’re currently exercising at the gym for 60 min, then you’re probably thinking you have to exercise for 60 min at home.

But you forget what we talked about in Nr. #1. In this case, working out from home is NOT a habit. Your natural tendency is to just chill at home. Or, sit on the couch. These are your habits right now. You have to try really hard NOT to do what comes naturally do to you, and instead direct your energies to working out.

And that’s how working out at home feels overwhelmingly boring, hard, or tedious. It goes against your current habits.

So how do you deal with this? How do you go big…at home? Watch the video to learn how.

But what about these people who can “just do it” and find it easy to get motivated to work from home?

Indeed, there are people out there who might not already have the habit of working or exercising at home, but they can just as easily start doing it! No motivation problems for them. Why?

Listen, don’t distract yourself thinking that there’s something about YOU that makes you unfit to do work from home. Yes, some people like working in coffee-shops. Others, like working at home. Each one of us has a different starting point.

No matter your starting point, if getting things done at home is something you’re after, then you should be able to make it happen. Maybe you’ll still like working at coffee-shops more. Maybe you’ll still like working out at the yoga studio more. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do work from home. Or, that you can’t do yoga at home. You can do anything you want to do! If you want to get motivated to work from home, you can!

You’re unstoppable!

Got it?

Now watch the video and tell me: What strategy do you think will help you the best? Tweet me at @FitnessReloaded!