The global lockdown has stretched for a bit now. A number of people have now been asked to work from home for an unknown period of time.
I’ve had the opportunity to work remote before this season and thought to share some things that could help those who’re just starting out on this.
1. Select your working space
Your environment matters a lot and determines the quality of your work. Now that you’re at home it can be tempting to just wake up and stay in bed to work, but will that keep you focused, alert and active? Maybe not. And if that’s the case, it will be very helpful to move off from bed to a proper work space with a desk, couch, comfy chair. Whatever work best for you.
Anywhere should be fine so long as you’ve earmarked it for work and made that mind shift that it’s work time nothing else.
2. Specify your working hours
When you had to drive to the office, you would plan to jump on the work tasks for a particular duration (could be 8, 9, 10 hours). And once that’s done you’d exit the workplace back for home.
It’s different now that you’re working at home because your home has indefinitely become your new workplace. So, it will be helpful to intentionally place the boundary to separate workplace duties from home/personal duties especially if you have other non-work related responsibilities to take care of.
Failure to set the boundary can cause the work hours to encroach into the time dedicated for other personal activities which may distort your daily plans.
Of course, there’ll be days when you would have to put in more hours than anticipated to meet up with some timelines which is fine. So long as you’re mindful of the boundaries and align to it as much as possible then fine.
3. Don’t forget transition triggers and breaks
Since your workplace and home are now in the same physical space, creating mental triggers to indicate start or end of work stuff can be very helpful. For example, to signal that start of the working hours, you could do something like make coffee/tea (that’s how most people start there workday), time yourself into the logging system, etc. Basically any action that’ll will signal to your brain that it’s time for get into work.
Likewise, to end the working hours you could time yourself out, do your workout, etc. Again, this will serve as an indicator that you’re ready to start with your other non-work activities for the day.
And from time to time, it will be very helpful to stand up, take a walk and stretch. Just taking breaks can help with refocusing and engaging you subconscious mind on a problem you’re engaged in.
4. Communicate more effectively
When it comes to effective team collaboration, communication is the key to the game. And now that you and your team are physically apart more emphasis should be placed on this. In short, more communication not less is required at this time not only to update one another on work progress but also to check in on one another to see each person is doing well .
Examples of communication tools that can be explored include Slack, Zoom, Webex, among so many others (check this out for more)
5. Avoid the distractions
So, it’s just you at home. No supervisor, no team member, and so you may be tempted to slack off. Maybe it’s you having to browse non-related website, aimlessly play with your phone, taking frequent visit to the refrigerator, etc (you know what gets you).
Just be mindful of the possible distractions and keep them in check so they don’t end up slamming down your productivity.
I hope you have an amazing time working remotely and ramp up your work quality.
What other things have helped you stay productive while working from home?
Happy working from home!!