How to Stay Productive Working from Home: Tips for Content Marketers

How to stay productive working from home is something many people question themselves daily. And that’s no wonder!

Only 7% of US citizens worked from home before the pandemic, compared to 35% staying at home offices in 2023. As this number has grown significantly in the last three years, it’s obvious that employees find it more beneficial to work from the comfort of their houses.

But how do you stay effective while working from home? Is it possible not to mess up working and personal hours without a strict division “office-home”?

Though 79% of workers feel like their managers trust them with the remote work, 54% of leaders fear a productivity drop.

Anyway, staying productive and doing your job qualitatively is essential regardless of whether you are working for a company or self-employed. It influences your satisfaction from work, your level of getting things done, and, last but not least, your income.

Today, we want to talk about specifically content-related jobs, so this article can be helpful for content marketers, creators, or writers.

Here are some real-life tips that help our team members successfully work from home for the last five years and be super productive.

Contents

• 1. Plan your weekly or daily activities
• 2. Meet with your team or clients
• 3. Minimize all unnecessary distractions
• 4. Use content writing and creation tools
• 5. Have your rituals
• Conclusion

1. Plan your weekly or daily activities

Some might wonder how to have fun at work while staying productive. Of course, we don’t want our remote working lives to transform into a constant flow of tasks without understanding when our spare time is.

You might say that planning doesn’t seem like fun.

We think differently. Planning can help you balance your activities and see the bigger picture. This way, you won’t be left with, let’s say, one creative day and four days of routine.

Check also: AI Content Creation & Planning Tools: Best 5 Services Tested

Sometimes, it might be tough to plan a week ahead. At least you can think about some approximate plans. Thus, manage your daily schedule more precisely.

It will help you smartly mix some monotonous tasks with creative ones. This will prevent you from burning out. There is a good reason why people say the best rest is a change of activity. A clever approach to mixing and planning your to-do lists will help you stay productive.

How can you organize your daily activities while working remotely? Use some helpful tools!

1. Asana

That’s an awesome service for your work organization. It’s completely free for individuals and teams of up to 10 employees. You can create boards, set an unlimited number of tasks, leave comments, collaborate with a team, and lots more. Plus, it allows lots of integrations (with, e.g., Figma, Slack, Hubspot, etc.)

2. Monday

That’s another software to plan your daily activities. It’s also free for personal use (small teams can also fit). You get access to three boards, unlimited docs, and over eight templates. You can also integrate Slack, Hubspot, Gmail, and other helpful services.

3. Airtable

It’s the third alternative you can use. It’s free for personal use. If you have up to five team members, you can also pick this tool. You have an unlimited number of bases - they can help you build your workflow. Integrate all the needed software as well (Slack, Github, Miro, etc.).

Sure thing, you can stick to the good old paper planner. Choose any convenient option for you. The point is to keep track of your activities. Prevent yourself from burning deadlines, stresses, or burnouts.

2. Meet with your team or clients

Meetings with your team help working from home be more productive.

It might happen so, that you’ve decided to work remotely because you don’t want extra interactions. Yet, we strongly recommend having at least one per week. Why does it help you stay effective?

Firstly, meetings help you stay up-to-date. They prevent you from doing extra work if the department’s plans have changed. If you are on the same page with your colleagues, you can plan and perform only essential tasks.

No need to get frustrated when you suddenly realize you need to perform tons of tasks within, say, two days. (The same refers to communication with clients.)

Secondly, they help to save the sense of belonging. You don’t feel yourself cut from the outer world. Either you chat with team members or customers; you remind yourself that you are working on something that can make others' lives better, or more interesting, or more comfortable.

Thirdly, these meetings keep you motivated. You can write down new ideas while communicating with others. You can be a part of the brainstorming process. You can share the briefs of your achievements and listen to colleagues’ successes.

All in all, if you wonder how to be more productive working from home, meetings can be your additional step to proactivity.

Nevertheless, we have some important tips here. Plan your meetings beforehand. Ensure the time slots fit both you and your team or clients. Try to make the meetings not too long (up to one hour is a nice spot).

3. Minimize all unnecessary distractions

You can get distractions while working in the office. But are there much more of them at home?

Well, that’s quite arguable.

Sometimes, the whirl of activity may catch you at home, and everything will turn into a home routine with breaks for work. Yet, once again, smart planning can keep you focused and help you understand the intensity of your work.

It’s not too bad when you spend 10 to 15 minutes every two hours on your household chores or just to rest. We are willing to discuss the distractions during the active working process more.

That’s why it’s better not to keep your smartphone in the arm-reach capability if you know that you will check it every five minutes. Nothing too extreme! Leave it in your home office, but ensure it’s not visible to you. (Of course, you can skip this recommendation if you are an SMM specialist, as, in this case, it’s your working tool.)

Don’t use additional screens or devices to watch content while working. You might think: it’s just white noise; it doesn’t make me less productive, etc. According to MIT Sloan, neurological science has reported that the human brain cannot focus on two things simultaneously. So, do not overload your brain with unnecessary stuff.

Getting timely rest (as we’ve mentioned, 10-15 minutes every 1,5 or two hours) keeps you more motivated. If you know you will have these breaks, your brain won’t play games with you and demand those distractions.

4. Use content writing and creation tools

Let’s move to another chapter on how to be productive working from home. Many of you have heard of writer’s block. It might catch you off guard both at home and in the office.

Though working from the comfort of your own home might be more effective, you cannot be 100% immune from being stuck.

That’s why, do not resist getting extra help. There are numerous content writing and creation tools. And most of them AI-powered. If you choose these services smartly, you can palpably improve your working process.

Gladly, we have some super-helpful articles containing lots of useful tools (many of them are used by our team). So, let’s check what tools you can use.

Top 7 AI content writing tools to boost your productivity at home:

1. Writesonic. Is a tool for SEO writing. Helps you generate posts from a short topic you state.

2. Ryrt. This software also generates various texts based on users’ prompts.

3. SEO.ai. The main purpose of this software is to help users create search-engine-optimized content.

4. Peppertype.ai. It’s another multipurpose tool to help users create posts, outlines, titles, and more.

5. Anyword. This tool helps writers create blog posts, landings, emails, and more forms of content.

6. ChatGPT. Is a hit AI-powered tool that helps people write different content - from posts to even poems. (Read an in-depth article about ChatGPT.)

7. Jasper. This software also enables content creation of various formats in a quick and easy way.

15 AI-based tools for effective content marketing

All these tools can help you with different content-related tasks. You create texts, analyze your effectiveness, craft better emails, and do lots more.

5 AI content creation and planning tools:

1. Buffer

2. Canva

3. NinjaContent

4. Later

5. Hootsuite

All these tools will allow you not only to schedule your content but also offer some content suggestions and ideas.

As you can see, there are a lot of smart tools that will ensure you stay effective even when working remotely. You can avoid stress and produce various, qualitative, and engaging content while spending less time.

Anyway, we want to remind you that search engines do not tolerate 100% AI-generated content. That’s why we recommend using writing tools as a source of inspiration or creator’s hub.

If you use AI for writing social media posts, we still strongly suggest you read, edit, and proof-check (if applicable) what’s been generated.

5. Have your rituals

We are sincerely sure that some established rituals help to start your remote working day positively and keep you proactive during it.

Did you have a cup of coffee at 10 am at work while working in the office? Repeat it at home. Do you have some plants you like or anti-stress toys? Keep them in your working area in your home office.

Surround yourself with things that make you happy and feel less stressed.

If you are a long-time remote worker, we bet you already have some sequences of actions or activities you do. Do you need a ten-minute yoga routine to kick-start your day? Great, add it to your schedule! Do you require a half-hour break walking your dog to refresh a little bit? That’s also an option. (Only notify your colleagues if you are working with a team that you will be out of reach from-to.)

All in all, small rituals that can help you start your working day and make it productive are much welcomed.

Conclusion

We hope you get the idea of how to be productive while working remotely after reading this article.

Undoubtedly, there might be more pieces of advice. Yet, we assume these points as a foundation. If you are a content marketer or writer or working in a content-related job, these suggestions can ease your routine and make your work more efficient.

Thankfully, we live in an era when there are a lot of special tools that can fine-tune our activities. So, why miss this opportunity?

Share what approaches you use to stay productive working from home. We are eager to hear more suggestions from our colleagues!