Smart tips for working from home in 2025

Work smarter not harder in 2025 with office furniture online

Do you have any New Year resolutions for 2025? If so, at least one of them is likely to be to do with improving your physical and/or mental wellbeing. But taking care of yourself can be very difficult in the busyness of day to day life. It can easily fall to the bottom of the priority list.

If you work from home for all or part of the time, you might think it should be easier to take care of yourself. In theory you could fit in a quick bit of fitness here and there, or perhaps build in one or two proper rest breaks during the working day. But the reality is very different.

If you’re not careful, you can end up working more hours from home than you would if you were in the office. It can also be more difficult to establish clear boundaries between work and home life so that you can switch off completely from work.

In this article we share five tips as to how to be smarter about working from home during 2025 so that you get the job done but also prioritise your own health and wellbeing.

Create a suitable place to work

In our recent article How to create the perfect home office we explained the importance of creating the best possible place for you to work comfortably and productively from home. Not only do you need to ring fence a space where you can work in peace, but also make sure that you have functional and ergonomic office furniture that provides the best working conditions for you, and will ensure your ongoing health and wellbeing.

So if you are going to be working from home for significant periods of time during 2025, the first smart thing to do is make sure that you have a place where you can work in comfort. Take a look at some examples of DIY Homefit’s office furniture online to get a few ideas of what would be possible for your home.

Understand your priorities

When working from home, it’s important to plan your day carefully. Firstly take into account the key priorities that you really need to get done. Recent research into working memory suggests that most people can only focus fully on around four things at once so it’s a good idea to start off with just four things that you absolutely have got to do today. There may then be a list of other things that you can move onto if you get through the main ones. 

When planning your day, also have a clear idea of the time you intend to finish work. Otherwise you can easily fall into the “just a few more minutes” trap and work far longer than is good for you. So try and have a cut off point, after which things will just have to wait until tomorrow. 

If you have a separate room in which to work, you can literally shut the door on work for the day. But if you are in a shared space, take a couple of minutes to put away as much of your work stuff as possible : there is a lot of truth in the saying “out of sight, out of mind”.

Divide up your time

Once you have your priorities and your cut off time, it’s also helpful to decide what you are going to do when. Many people find it helpful to divide their day into chunks. You may have heard of the Pomodoro technique which suggests that you split your working day into 25 minute chunks with a 5 minute break in between. Your 25 minute chunks could consist of a focused activity such as working on a key priority, answering emails, making phone calls etc, broken up by the 5 minute break.

Whilst the length and content of your time slots may need to vary to suit your commitments and circumstances, a structured approach to work can be more productive than just ploughing in and trying to do several things all at once.

Manage interruptions

Of course, a major snag to dividing up your time productively is all the interruptions during your working day. And when you work from home, these can come from family and friends as well as colleagues and clients.

Some interruptions are inevitable and just part of life that you need to manage at the time. But if there are persistent interruptions from the same handful of people there are a couple of tips that may help.

The first is to be proactive rather than reactive. If a colleague is constantly phoning or emailing you, rather than feeling you have to respond immediately, fix a convenient time to talk to them properly. Depending on the person and the situation this could even become a regular thing. For example you could put a daily 5 minute catch up call in the calendar and make it clear that everything can wait for the next call unless it is desperately urgent.

The second tip is to hide! From your perspective, you block out some time when you really will not take any kind of interruption and can get on with some concentrated work. How this appears to the outside world is up to you. For colleagues you may want to put a fictional meeting in your calendar so they know not to interrupt you. Or turn all your devices onto autoreply or do not disturb mode. For families you could agree that when a particular sign is on the office door they can’t come in, or if that proves ineffective decamp to a coffee shop or library.

Whatever works best for you, you need to find creative ways to minimise constant interruptions during your working day.

Take regular breaks

Alongside managing unwelcome interruptions, you do need to allow yourself breaks during the working day. Ideally, build in a few different length breaks during the day to clear your head and stretch your legs. If you decide to give the Pomodoro technique a try, there is a lot you can achieve during your five minute breaks, such as making a coffee, putting a load of laundry on, watering the plants or doing a few quick exercises.

Also try to take a longer break for lunch and have something healthy to eat away from your desk. Trying to work whilst shoving processed food into your mouth is not going to do you any good at all, and won’t save any time in terms of productivity.

You will definitely be more productive by building in a few breaks during the day and doing something completely different for a few minutes rather than just keeping slogging away. You will feel refreshed and more energised to get back and tackle the next task that awaits.

We hope that our five tips help you to be smarter about working from home in 2025. And remember, if you need to improve your home working space, DIY Homefit supplies office furniture online that could be just what you are looking for. So why not take a browse through our gallery of home office ideas to find out more.