7 Reasons You Can Never Be Productive At Home

Since technological advances have radically changed our lives, we, human beings, don’t have the same need to leave home as often as before. And spending more time indoors than ever, with more free time on your hands, you wonder why you can never be productive at home.

Hours, days, and weeks go by. But for some reason, you can’t bring yourself to be productive at home.

What is it about the comfortable home life that doesn’t allow you to be productive, get things done, and feel fulfilled? Keep reading to find out.

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Why is it bad when you can never be productive at home?

In today’s times, we are all spending more time at home. We work remotely, own businesses that can be operated from the comfort of our couch, and watch more movies on streaming services than we go to the cinema. Not to mention that, in this post-pandemic world, many people have discovered how to entertain themselves from home — and consequently, save money as well.

However, the more time people spend indoors, the more they struggle with maintaining productivity.

When you can never be productive at home, it affects your self-esteem. Not because your value lies solely in being productive, but because you see the days go by without experiencing any sense of accomplishment or improvement in your life.

Productivity gives you purpose. Having purpose in your life gives you a reason to get up every morning, and when you reach a goal your self-esteem rockets. Striving towards something gives you energy, focus and conviction; people who lack this direction are rarely happy.

— Read the full article at Timely Blog

Identifying what is holding you back, which is not allowing you to be productive, is the first step to breaking the procrastination cycle.

7 Reasons you can never be productive at home

To help you figure out a solution, here are 7 oft-repeated things in everyday life that easily make you never manage to be productive at home.

1. You lack purpose or your purpose does not motivate you enough to become more productive

When you work or study in a space that is not your home, you often have to deal with supervision. This supervision forces you to stay productive.

At your home, though, a motivational factor is needed since you don’t have any supervisors forcing you to do anything. This motivating factor is usually a pursuit you are trying to achieve. 

After all, why wake up earlier or go to sleep later to work on something that is probably tiring when you don’t know what you’ll get out of it? Or maybe you know, but it’s not worth the effort (?)

Without a worthwhile purpose, you can never be productive at home because there is no real motivation to do so.

2. You are in a comfortable situation

More often than not, we are productive because we need to be. For example, if you’re working on a side hustle while working a 9-to-5 job, being effective in your spare time at home isn’t a choice.

Chances are high that you need the money this side hustle generates or will generate in the future.

If you can never be productive at home, maybe it’s because you can afford not to be productive.

But make no mistake! Just because you’re in a comfortable situation doesn’t mean you’re in an ideal one.

Perhaps you can afford to avoid productivity, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have a better life or feel better about yourself if you reached other heights in your life.

Think if there isn’t something you want to learn or have, but you’ve convinced yourself that you “don’t need it all that much” just to justify your procrastination habits or your lack of motivation.

Related: How Can You Stop Being Lazy and Unmotivated? 5 Life-Changing Facts

3. You rely too much on external incentives and validation

Here’s a truth about working or studying from home, or working on a personal project: you’ll spend most of your time alone with no one to pat you on the back and say they’re proud of you.

If you can never be productive at home, this could be a sign that you are dependent on external encouragement or validation. When you don’t have any kind of cheerleader or supervisor, you feel unmotivated to act.

Putting all of your motivation into external validation is placing what you hold most dear — your life and your time — at the mercy of others’ feedback.

We must learn to be proud of ourselves and feel fulfilled by how much we’ve progressed as well as our hard work. And we must do it without the need to be validated at every step we take.

4. Your productivity cannot be adjusted to different circumstances or situations

Staying productive at home isn’t always up to you alone. Unless you live alone, of course. But if you have roommates, a partner, or family members living with you, you need to adapt to their routines.

Not all people stay productive in the same way. Some people can work and perform other duties with other people’s noise interfering, while others need an environment fully adjustable to their will to be productive.

In the latter case, what to do when you can never be productive at home because the other residents interfere with your concentration?

If this is your situation, what’s left to you is to adapt:

• Or you adapt to the other residents’ routine, taking advantage of the moments when they are not at home or sleeping, to do productive things.
• Or you talk to them and try to come to an agreement that will require adaptation by all parties involved.

Whatever the way, you need to be versatile and learn to adapt.

5. You don’t know where to start being productive

Although you do want to make your stay-at-home moments more productive, you have no idea where to start. You already have a routine that involves procrastination and activities that you do in “automatic mode” to distract yourself. 

Where to start being productive then, especially when you don’t have any plan of action or even an end goal?

Breaking free from this mindset is not easy. But when you don’t, everyday life becomes a never-ending cycle in which you never do anything productive because you never start doing anything productive.

6. You are about to start doing something productive at home… “in a little while”

In some cases, you know perfectly well what to do to be productive at home. Maybe you even have a list. The problem is that you always leave it to start “in a little while”.

You just need to check your social media real quick. After a little while, you’ll start what you have to do.

But no, wait! Before you start, you’re just going to check out the next episode of that TV series. It’s quick. It’s gonna take just a little while!

And so the day begins, passes, and ends. Taking this pattern into account, do you still wonder why you can never be productive at home?

7. You need an immediate reward to be productive at home

Boosting your productivity at home doesn’t mean you’ll get the rewards right away. More often than not, being productive means days, weeks, months, and even years (!) of productivity and hard work until your much-desired reward is achieved.

Really worthwhile rewards aren’t like the dopamine released in our brains every time we get a social media like — quick and disposable. Valuable rewards take time, patience, and a lot of effort to achieve.

How to bring yourself to be more productive at home

Here are some golden tips to help you become more productive at home and turn that sense of accomplishment into an everyday event.

Just start: Don’t worry about where to start or even how to start. You can start wrong, get disorganized, and do it without a plan. Doesn’t matter! Just start! You can perfect your plan and your productive routine as the days go by.

Get out of passive mode: Get out of your comfort zone. Every day you just consume stuff — TV series, videos by content creators, etc. — and obey orders, but never produce or create anything. Get out of the passive consumer position a little bit and create something. Unleash your creativity and use it to be more productive at home.

Get rid of home traps: Social media apps and streaming services are always there on your phone, 24/7 at your fingertips.

Too much social media and entertainment are probably distracting you from the reasons why you can never be productive at home.

Make it difficult to access these apps by turning off your phone and/or logging out on all your devices.

Don’t let these home traps catch you in those 30 seconds when you’re wondering how to start being productive.

Create long-term and short-term goals: Short-term goals give you the small doses of reward and motivation you need on your way to long-term goals — the big commitments and ultimate plans you don’t want to lose sight of.

“Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them.”

— Oscar Wilde

Learn to be less perfectionist: When you start being more productive at home, you don’t have to do everything perfectly right away. Perfection comes with time, usually after you’ve done it wrong many times. But to do it wrong many times, first, you have to lose the fear of starting.

Boost your productivity at home

You can never be productive at home because the lack of purpose and the typical distractions of the home environment, added to the sense of comfort and commodity, are holding you back.

Don’t let these household traps hold you back. Start doing productive things little by little, until the sense of achievement becomes something you can’t live without!