Ask HN: How to stay focused and motivated working from home?

But that’s not always sufficient. As several others have pointed out: he/she who has a why can endure almost any how. Find your purpose & goal, and align your work with that purpose. The concept of ikigai is a good starting point.

You feel better for doing all those things and want to keep doing them as a result usually. I love to lift heavy weights and sleep. Eating healthy not so much but life isn't all about having what you want all the time.

I do differ with the no caffeine past noon though. I don't have too much trouble with caffeine and falling asleep though.

Apart from sleeping well, fitness & diet are tough at first but once you get in the flow they're easy and actually become a part of what you love to do. Just got to find the right workout for you.

- Working at a cafe, if they're open near you. Prevents distractions like porn, pets, TV.

- Getting a physical pomodoro timer like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J5OFW0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... I tried the webapps and they just wouldn't stick. I needed something on my desk that I cannot minimize or close. I set it to 40 min blocks for "work" in which I devote myself to staying focused. Every time I want to click away to youtube, I glance at the timer and it brings my focus back. When it's done, I set it for a 10 minute break. This is what I did in college too.

I've worked mostly at home for most of the last 20 years (albeit with some BIC periods, depending on customer work) and I have found the last year terribly difficult, far more than any other period (even when I first started working mostly from home after about 15 years of full-time BIC).

Sometime yesterday I just stopped. I couldn't work anymore. I had plenty to do, but I felt drained, far more fatigued than simple lack of sleep would explain.

Long story short, playing cards with my GF for an hour before supper then vegging for the evening and getting a solid night's sleep reset things for me.

I had burnt myself out, again. There's been a lot of that this past year.

My prescription? Little things.

1) Take breaks.

Even if you have a lot to do. Even if breaks are essentially somewhere else in the house right now. Get away from your screens, do something that allows as much of your work self as possible to disengage. For me, this means not reading, not even wrenching (unless the project on the go is well in hand, or something I can do without thinking, like changing the brakes or oil).

2) Exercise.

This the toughest one for me. I am not a gym rat and have no love of exercise, but I love how I feel afterwards. Force yourself to get a walk, do squats, pushups, anything. It really does help.

3) Keep a schedule, more or less. Keep separate work and non-work places.

Working from homes gives you 7/24 access to work, and sometimes work is a break from the real world and its covidiots and its selfish twits. For me, engaging in work gives me a break from that selfish, twitty, covidioty world.

But work fatigues your work self, and too much work self fatigue exhausts it to the point you can no longer work.

4) Forgive yourself. Be graceful with yourself.

We are our own worst critics, we see our "flaws" thousands of times larger than they are - if they "are" at all (cf "spotlight effect"). Some days, the schedule will be hard to maintain, exercise won't fit in to that schedule, the non-work-self distractions will pale, or any of a thousand other things will cause you to ignore the advice you have given yourself, the routine you have tried to keep, and you will skip the breaks or the workout or you will overwork.

And you will be tempted to chastise yourself, to be angry with yourself. Don't, don't be.

Forgive yourself as you would forgive someone else, give yourself permission to backslide today and try again tomorrow.

5) Reach out to others. That helps too. Just like you did here.

We're not "all in this together", necessarily, but we are in this more or less the same way. We can learn from each other, support each other, and that helps us too. Selfish altruism, as it were.

- When it's difficult to start the day, I usually fool myself, I'll say OK I'll try 25 minutes and see if this works, usually I get hooked and continue working for hours.

- Try to adjust the task in hand so it is not so boring and not so challenging

- If you finish working leave something half finished (and a bit exciting) for the next day, since usually the start is the most difficult part I leave something unfinished that I actually want to do from the work I'm doing