The ultimate guide for being productive while working from home

• Choose a comfortable place in your home that is spacious and well lit, preferably where you have privacy.
• As if you were in an office, you will need a table with all the necessary elements to carry out your tasks, including a computer and telephone, both for your own exclusive use.
• Whatever your work environment, make it clear to the people who live with you that you are working and cannot enter the room all the time.

• Your chair or armchair should be comfortable so that you can work in the correct position and with your feet on the ground.
• Don't even think about working lying down! Using your laptop in bed can affect your breathing and cause pain in your neck, spine and forearms.  A study in 2012 revealed that half of your employees are used to reading and responding to work emails from bed.

• As much as working at home may allow you to have a more flexible schedule, it is important that you establish one to start your daily activities.
• The time you start working will determine the pace of the rest of your day.

Most people only start planning their work day when they arrive at the office in the morning. Don’t waste your time! Before you go to sleep, take a few minutes to figure out what you want or need to do the next day. It will make you less worried in the morning, trust us.

If in conventional companies the managers establish your deadlines, when working from home it is you who has the responsibility for your own results. The absence of command can be a temptation to postpone tasks.  Whether it is responding to a certain amount of emails, solving demands or recording a video per day, for example.

Although all tasks are important, there are some that cannot be left for later, those that require more time or that have a greater impact on your business. It's important to have clear goals, so that you can distinguish priority activities from those you can put off until later.

We know that sometimes there is a lot of laziness and the desire to postpone some task, especially the less urgent ones, is enormous.

Don't make that mistake! Whenever you think about procrastinating, try to think of all the things you could have done if you hadn't wasted all that time.

• People are different and each of us has a period of the day when we are more or less productive. Some people can concentrate better and produce more in the morning, others in the afternoon and still others work better at night.
• Our top tip is to identify when you can concentrate more and schedule the most difficult tasks or those that require the most attention during that time.

• You start writing an email, get a call that you have to answer in that minute, while you’re chatting and finishing a report. For many years professionals presumed that to excel in their business they needed to perform more than one task at a time-the famous multitasking. If this is your case, it may be time to rethink it.
• That's because, despite its high storage capacity, the brain only processes one piece of information at a time. In other words, productivity has nothing to do with doing several things at once, but quite the opposite.

• If you know that certain objects or activities can distract you from work, the best thing you can do is to stay away from them. 
• Social networking sites, TV, smart phones, side conversations, and pets are some of the things that take your attention away from work.

• Keeping organized and focused on day-to-day work can be a difficult task. In the meantime, there are some online tools and applications that can help in this mission and ensure that your day is more productive. 
• If you have a Google mail, for example, you can use Google Calendar to list the week's tasks in advance. As the commitments approach you will receive all the email notifications.
• If you are not a fan of applications then you can schedule reminders on your mobile phone. Set the alarms early so you don't run the risk of forgetting your tasks.

For each completed activity, take a few minutes to do something that gives you pleasure, or simply disconnect from work. Free time is also an opportunity to find external references that can help you improve your performance on an ongoing basis.

Knowing when to stop is very important. Set a time to end the day. Otherwise, your work will get mixed up with your personal life, and that way you lose one of the biggest advantages of the home office, which is having more time for yourself.