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Home Office Distractions vs. Employer’s Office Distractions (Offsite vs Onsite)

No matter where you are when you’re doing your work, there’s a good chance that you’re going to get distracted. There’s even a good chance that you’re going to let yourself get distracted. In some ways, distractions can be a good thing. It’s just not natural for us to sit down and work for eight hours straight without a break, so we often find ways to let certain distractions get our attention. It breaks up the monotony of our days and can even help us to be more productive if we monitor the distractions and choose good ones over not-so-good ones.

In order to do that, we need to be able to identify what our distractions are and how to make them positives instead of negatives. Of course, distractions are different depending on whether you are working from home or working in an office. Both kinds have their pros and cons so let’s take a look at some of the basic ones so that you can start getting a grasp on good vs. bad distraction behavior.

Distractions when working from home

Here are the most common distractions that happen to people who are working from home:

• Distractions of comfort. Home is a place where you probably like to spend your time, so it’s easy to get distracted doing homey things that you enjoy. Taking a break to shower, working on your laptop while in bed, spending some time gardening … these are all distractions of comfort that happen when you work from home. In general, these can be good distractions if you need a break from the stress of work but bad distractions if you let them regularly interrupt your creativity.
• Distractions from blurred boundaries. In other words, working from home can sometimes mean that you don’t know when you’re at work and when you’re at home. If you’re getting the job done and you’re happy, then it doesn’t matter. But if you feel like you’re always working and never getting anything done, these distractions need to go. Set work hours and work within them, then ignore work in your off hours.
• Distractions from other people. Sometimes people think that because you work from home, you’re not “really” working. So they drop by, they call constantly, they schedule lunch dates that they want to last for three hours. These can be pleasant distractions but they’re usually bad for business. If you feel like this is an indulgence you need, set aside one day of the week when you’ll let yourself indulge and then be all business on those other days.

Distractions when working at the office

Here are the most common distractions that happen to people who working from an office:

• The water cooler. This is the most common work distraction that there is. Co-workers, the gossip circle, the long lunch, the break room … you know the story. If it helps you take a break on the job, it’s a good distraction. If it makes you feel socially stressed (think cliques) or hinders you from actually working, it’s a bad distraction.
• Distractions imposed by superiors. Your boss wants you to do a thousand things at once. Your supervisor comes by your cubicle each day to work on micromanaging you. Distractions imposed by superiors are sometimes unavoidable and often problematic. If it’s posing a real problem to your work day, talk it out.
• Watching the clock. If you don’t like your job, or even if you just wish that you were home earlier on Friday night, you could spend a lot of time counting the minutes until you get to leave. Not only does this stop you from getting the job done, it makes you miserable.

In addition to the distractions that are unique to either working at home or working from the office, there are those distractions that are common to both types of work. These generally fall under the category of distractions by technology. The phone, the email accounts, the IM screens … you know if you need to put some rules on their use or if they’re helpful distractions that you give you a much-needed break while still getting work taken care of. In fact, you know that about all of these distractions so take a look at whether or not the work that you’re doing and the way that you’re doing it are working for you.

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