Ultimate Guide To Successfully Balancing Online Study With WFH

You’ve just completed an eight-hour working day from the comfort of your own home – but now you need to do your dedicated hours of online study. Typically, you might leave the office, commute home, have a short break, eat dinner and then sit down to complete your study. However, working from home and studying from home might leave you without the motivation you need to switch between ‘work’ mode and ‘study’ mode.

Environmental changes are incredibly important for productivity. Sitting in the same spot, surrounded by the same scenery, for an extended period of time can leave you feeling exhausted, drained, and even irritated. The question is – how do you keep productive when you are in the same environment for both work and study?

In this guide, we’ll give you helpful tips on how to stay focused, motivated and productive when working and studying in the same space.

The benefits of remote work and online study

Working remotely and studying online are very similar. They both give you the flexibility to achieve your set goals wherever you want – at home, in the car, at the beach, on a plane – the choice is yours where you get your work or study done. Another benefit is the ability to choose the working (or studying) hours best suited to your lifestyle. You can complete your work when it suits you. Whether that’s first thing in the morning, or at 10 pm when the kids are asleep.

Remote work is very similar, although you may have less flexibility on work times due to scheduled meetings. However, if you’re stuck at home due to circumstances like an injury, sickness or required isolation, you might be left feeling frustrated and unproductive.

Tip #1: Break up your workspace and study space

If you work from a home office, consider breaking up your workspace and your study space. There are lots of ways you can go about doing this, including:

• Physically move to a different location – your dining room table, kitchen counter, verandah, backyard, apartment lobby, picnic table at a local park, a cafe, or a library. Remember to take your charger as well as your laptop!
• Flip modes. Make yourself a double-sided sign where one side says ‘Working’ and the other says ‘Studying’. Differentiate the sides as much as you can by changing the colours, font or accompanying graphic. Hang the sign above your desk and ‘flip’ sides when you switch into study mode from work mode and vice versa.
• Take an action break. Self-create a commute to break up your workday and study day. Check your mailbox, brew yourself a cup of tea, clear your desk, take the dog for a quick walk, or set the timer for five minutes and do a short cleaning blitz.
• Make an environmental change. Change the type of music or white noise you listen to, switch up the scent in your diffuser, turn lamps on or off, or light a candle. Something that signals you’re doing something different now.
• Put your ‘thinking cap’ on. Some authors put on lipstick or an article of clothing to help them channel their protagonist. The idea here is similar: keep a hat handy and designate it your ‘thinking cap’. When you’re about to start study, put on your thinking cap. Take it off when you’ve finished your study session.

Bonus tip: Remember that while your study area can be as flexible and relaxed as you want, it helps to have work boundaries. Working from home or studying at home might conjure up thoughts of getting to lounge in bed, but this can confuse the mind’s state between being active and relaxed.

Wherever you set up and whichever tips work best for you, separating your work and study environments will have a great effect on your productivity and focus. It’s also important to make sure you’ve set your workstation up for success, so make sure you have everything you need – both physically and digitally – to launch straight into a study session.

How to create the best study environment

Tip #2: Create a set schedule for each day

A set-in-stone schedule will give you a structure to follow each day. Here are some examples of schedules you may want to use:

Schedule A

Schedule B

Schedule C

Use whichever schedule works for you, switch it up on different days of the week, or create your own. You can even write it in a daily planner or online app.

Bonus tip: Figure out approximately how long your work tasks will take you and allocate specific hours to each task. Take the same approach with your study – you might have a 30-minute tutorial to get through and then 30 minutes of notes to create. By breaking all of your tasks down to shorter time-frames, you can feel accomplished when you tick each item off your list.

5 Tips to Stay Motivated for Online Study

Tip #3: Use a timer to keep you on track

Given you are working and studying from home, you have access to all your comforts and belongings. You can use the traditional timer or stopwatch to keep you on track, but why not try something different that will give you extra productivity points? Try putting on a load of washing and using that time to complete a study or work task. When it’s finished, hang it out or chuck it in the dryer, then start again with another ‘set and simmer’ household task.

Getting a tedious chore out of the way and ticking off study and work tasks? Check!

Tip #4: Take study breaks to keep focused

If you feel yourself getting tired or drained, take a 15 or 20-minute break to do something other than work. You could make lunch, go for a walk, or play with your pets or kids. By giving yourself a small break away from your tasks, you’ll be able to return to study feeling rejuvenated and ready to get it done. Doing something physical is a particularly good way to break up study. The endorphins you get from exercising will flood your brain with happy chemicals that make focusing back on study easier. Go for a quick walk up and down your street, run on the spot, or do some stretches in your backyard.

Tip #5: Have an early start

A great benefit of working or studying from home is that your commute time is cut to about… one minute! Given your increased time in the day, try getting started early. Hitting study first thing in the morning, or shifting to an earlier work day with an earlier finish, is an excellent way to make progress.

Tip #6: Remove distractions like social media that will interrupt your study

Although easier said than done, muting your phone, turning it onto ‘Do Not Disturb’, or placing your phone in another room, can make a great difference in staying focused. Reward yourself with a phone check when you’ve completed a group of three tasks or study goals.

Tip #7: Give yourself end-of-week progress updates

Similarly to how you might send your boss a weekly summary of work completed, write yourself a list of all the study goals you’ve accomplished that week. This helps to keep you accountable for what you have or haven’t done and helps you hone in on what to focus on for the following week.

Tip #8: Look after yourself and your mental health

Working and studying from home can throw everything off-balance if you’re not careful. The trick is to try not to get too stuck at home – put effort into social interaction, either over the phone, online, or face-to-face. Getting your 30+ minutes of exercise can also be a big boon for both your physical and mental health. (You can even incorporate stretches into your workday to get you moving and break up your tasks.) Some people also find it helpful to get dressed for the day, even if no one except our partner and the Amazon delivery driver will see you. As tempting as it is to stay in your pajamas all day, wearing ‘office’ clothes or something presentable can really boost your confidence and get you in the zone.

Bonus tip: Need to psych yourself up for study? Switch modes and reward yourself at the same time by switching out of your ‘work’ clothes into you favourite comfy hoodie or jumper when you start studying.

Both working from home and studying online rely heavily on good habits. By forming these good habits, you’ll begin to find a balance between work, study, and play, boost your productivity, maintain your focus, and ensure you actually get things done.

Best Ways to Work Remotely for Work and Study