With snow storms happening regularly, you don’t want to risk life and limb getting to the office, but how can you make sure you are staying productive and not come down with a case of cabin fever?

Here are some quick and easy tips for you that you can use to keep things productive:

1. Find an area in the house you can concentrate. I know most of us have been there before- “working from home” quickly becomes “working from couch”. If you find yourself watching day time TV more than responding to emails, you know it’s time to make a move. I personally find my kitchen table the most productive place to work, but I’ll leave this up to you. Here are few criteria you can use to decide where to post up:

• Your workspace should be free from distractions & noise.
•  Look for an area where you have natural light. This is crucial for maintaining concentration.
• Make sure you have a comfortable chair, so you don’t find yourself back on the couch mid-day.

2. Stay connected and up to date. When I say stay up-to-date, I don’t mean with the latest snowfall totals (as tempting as that may be). I mean making sure you are accessible to anyone, anywhere for quick ad-hoc collaboration or for a pre-planned meeting – just because it snows, that doesn’t mean projects are on hold! With chat or email I can quickly get a question answered, but if I need to have a more collaborative conversation, I always use join.me or any other reliable similar service. That way I can show my screen, pass presenter role and even annotate if I need to. It also helps that if the whole team is working from home, they can all dial-in and be on the same call.

3. Come up with goals. Set 3 goals for yourself for the day and strive to hit those goals by certain times in the day. When working from home it’s easy to get distracted and push off certain tasks for later in the day. Then, all of sudden, it’s almost time for dinner and you haven’t accomplished anything on your to-do list. I love to use Asana to keep with daily tasks and stay up to date on my team’s progress and tasks. This is especially convenient when I can’t just walk over to their desks and get a status update.

4. Enjoy your time at home. The best thing about being productive when you’re snowed in is that you can fend off cabin fever. When you close up your laptop for the day, you will actually feel accomplished. Treat yourself to a hot chocolate, you deserve it!

When all is said and done, and you learn you need help with your technology — give us a ring! Rain or snow we’ll walk you through what needs to be done and even make a house call, if necessary.