Matt Wright: Top 10 Tips for Motivating Yourself when Home-working

Speaker: Matt Noble Wright
Business: Nobleword Copywriting
Topic: Working from Home

Week 2 of Quarantine and the novelty of working from home full-time starting to wear off a little?

Motivation lagging and good intentions going by the wayside?

Remind yourself of these 10 Tips for Motivating Yourself at Home.


  1. Have a schedule
    • Organise your day as if you have to get up to go to work
  2. Get dressed
    • “When we put on an item of clothing it is common for the wearer to adopt the characteristics associated with that garment. A lot of clothing has symbolic meaning for us, whether it’s ‘professional work attire’ or ‘relaxing weekend wear,’ so when we put it on we prime the brain to behave in ways consistent with that meaning.” – Karen Pine (professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire)
  3. Don’t work where you sleep
    • It helps with a delineation between work and play
  4. Exercise
    • Being sedentary isn’t just harmful for your health, it’s terrible for your motivation and discipline; exercise gives you a boost of energy that’s incredibly helpful for productivity
  5. Earn Rewards
    • Rather than binge-watching box sets and putting off any work until the evening, use tv as a reward in the evening
    • For smaller blocks of time, use micro-rewards; e.g. an hour of work = 10 minutes on a video game
  6. Mute Social Media
    • That little “bong” message noise will instantly jolt you out of thinking about whatever you’re supposed to be working on.
    • Either hide your phone or mute it
  7. Get Outside
    • When working from home, your house or apartment can become your bunker; it’s a safe spot that has everything you need, so why should you ever bother leaving?
    • Your body needs sunlight (easier said than done in the UK much of the year…) and getting outside (for your scheduled 1-hour per day) will help your mental sanity
  8. Talk to other Human Beings
    • Make up for the lack of actual human contact where you can – adapt, improvise, do anything that forces you to have a conversation or engage with another human
  9. Declare war on Distracting Sites
    • Delete distracting sites (amusing cats…etc) from your favourite bar
  10. Have a side project to fill the dead space
    • Working from home trims all that fat from your workday, so with diligence, a 9-5 job might well turn into a 9-2 job
    • Use the time freed up to take up  a hobby (such as drawing) or starting that book you’d meant to write, or…whatever!

Date: 3rd April 2020

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