How to Overcome the Monotony & Lethargy in a Telecommuting Job?

One of the greatest disadvantages of a telecommuting job is the easy access to your bed at home that whenever boredom or lethargy steps in, you would be there crashing for a couple of minutes or hours unless you’re self disciplined. For me, it’s ten long years into medical transcription profession (out of which six long years as a home transcriptionist) and that initial enthusiasm has faded out in knowing the deep unknown facts of medical science and medical terminologies when I was new to this field. Now I need to push each and every day especially when I see the beginning of a day with 12 hours of work, and in this drenching spring with heavy downpour outside, I need to hold back the temptation of escaping back to the cozy bed with heavy ropes and anchors. On Monday mornings, I just never want to get out of the bed at all.

However, that is not the case with paydays! Paydays are great days that you feel so much enthusiastic that you will churn out any work that has been given to you!

So analyzing all the facts on when does one lose interest and give way for boredom to step in, here are a few of the situations. However, this is not limited to a telecommuting job but applicable to any job that you’re involved with.

• Lot of work beyond your normal capacity. Anything more than eight hours of work makes me lazy whereas with anything less than four hours of work I’d finish it in one go and get ejected from the seat. (However, paydays wouldn’t be enthusiastic if there is less work for more than a week or so!)
• Not healthy. Whenever your body doesn’t cooperate with your commands, you’re irritated and wouldn’t be to able concentrate on the work. Even some medicines prescribed by your family physician would be sedative in nature, as in the case of a cough syrup with alcohol.
• Repetitive nature of work. You became the master of the job and don’t have to do researches in learning new things on the job.
• Sedentary occupation. Telecommuting jobs are for sure sedentary jobs and jobs like home transcription do not require any interaction with others at all, you’re unable to move around; especially if you’re a chatterbox, you start thinking as if you have lost all your freedom in life just for the sake of a few currency bills.
• No career progression. Whenever there are no upward movements in your career, you lose interest.
• Stagnant earnings. Whenever you couldn’t see an increment in your earnings at least on a yearly basis if at all not on a monthly basis, you lose interest pursuing the career but circumstances may be compelling you to continue as the family will be depending on your income to survive.
• Lack of ample rest. You didn’t sleep the previous night as you were at your friend’s birthday bash or someone was ill at home or the kids didn’t let you sleep, no wonder the next day would obviously be a yawning day.

How to break the monotony and lethargy?

Being passionate about what we do can keep monotony and lethargy at bay. Apparently, all of us are not passionate about our jobs, and if at all we are passionate about what we do, it is not always. Most of us work for just the sake of money to pay our bills. However, we cannot make each day a payday (unless you’re a daily wages labor) to sustain that enthusiasm at work. Hence if we could break or prevent the above said aspects, we can successfully break the lethargy or the monotony at job that steps in at some point in time. We have to bring in some other circuit breakers to do the task of breaking monotony and lethargy at work. Here are a few of them:

• A small break. A five-minute break every hour, a walk to the bathroom or a stroll, couple of deep breaths would fetch you the extra oxygen required to start again stimulated, a look at the beautiful world outside would be not only helpful in breaking that drowsiness and boredom but also a good practice in terms of avoiding computer vision syndrome and minimizing the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.
• A cup of coffee. Pumping caffeine inside the nerves once in the morning and evening should revitalize you undoubtedly.
• Doing something interesting alongside, may be a tweet. Twitter changed the way I work and view the world. I joined Twitter this New Year and was a fence-sitter for the first month or so because I was of the view that Twitter is a sheer waste of time and is a distraction while at work but with the information I could get from Twitter and being able to associate virtually with the people of the same medical transcription profession, I had to change my views. Now, whenever I feel bored or drowsy, I would open my Twitter window and would see what’s going on in the world, a glimpse of what’s going on in my friends’ world, a stare at the Twitter public timeline for some time would bring in a change and I’m back refreshed. (Wanna follow me on Twitter?)
• Sometimes even distractions are helpful. Hence instead of trying to minimize distractions, give way to some of your pet peeves.
• May be a career change something in synonymous with the current one, transformation of a medical transcriptionist to a virtual assistant, will be helpful to bail you out of that monotony.
• A medical transcription job requires involvement of almost all your organs which may not be the case with most of the other telecommuting jobs. You can spare your ears to listen to music while at work where your ears are not involved with work. Music has that divine characteristics of giving you another birth in this world.
• Other things as usual, bite what you can chew, have adequate rest and sleep, a healthy mind in a healthy body, hence try to stay healthy, think how you could improve your earnings and grow career wise, take a break for a week, a break into the nature and green woods should bring you back refreshed stuffed with pure oxygen in each and every cell of yours, guaranteed.

Did I miss anything? Do you have something to say? Leave it in the comments section below.