While working from home has become more prevalent in recent years, it has boomed in popularity in recent months especially. However, for most of the employees who have never worked from home in their past careers, it would be challenging to adopt new changes in their work conditions.
For a technical approach to make it possible and successful, It not all depends only on IT experts of your company but on the users as well, with their IT support/solutions and work commitment, it seems easy to work from home for an extended period. But it is not, and even not all of us are very comfortable with the new working conditions.
Given the current worldwide conditions, adjusting to this sort of work conditions is more than should be expected, and that is the reason today we share with you a few effective work from home tips that have worked effectively for any remote workers.
Follow the Old Work Schedule
To keep up consistency in your daily routine, and you have already maintained the difference between both work hours and home hours. It would be better you keep maintaining similar work hours no matter you work from home or somewhere else. Your brain has already adjusted it with the old work schedules, and to avoid such instability, just follow the same routine which you used to follow during the regular working days. And you must try harder to follow it as much as you can.
Maintain Your Daily Routine as Usual
Working from home cannot be synonymous with not working. We must continue with our daily routines and adhere to schedules. For that, do not stop doing what you did when you went to the office. If you entered at 8:00 am, continue to work at that time, if you stopped to eat at 1:30 pm, stop to have a lunch break and if you finish your work at 4:00 pm, do not extend yourself any longer and be able to end your workday at the time you have.
Define a schedule and mark both work and break hours. You are not in the office for 8 hours straight in front of a computer, and you shouldn’t be at home either: take your breaks, have a coffee, do four stretches, etc.
Do not eat with the laptop next to you, do not keep checking emails at 8:00 p.m., and when you are working, try to focus to the maximum. This way, you can dedicate the time required to work without exceeding yourself and also not waste time with household chores when you should be working. Make your schedule and stick to it.
Set Rules at Home
Working from home becomes more challenging as compared to the office. There are a lot of distractions, interruptions, Home laziness, etc. which hinders you from delivering as much you used to at the office. When you try to focus on your work, your children will interrupt you, the loud sound of television will distract you, and the irritating uninvited guests. To avoid such a situation, you must Set strict Home rules and ask your family members to follow and co-operate with you during working hours. Even you are also abiding by all the home rules which you have posted on your family members.
Schedule Breaks
Working from home will be quite tedious and frustrating at times because Home is a comfort zone where you used to relax after office, where you do other kinds of stuff other than office works. To overcome this boredom and frustration, you can schedule your breaks according to your convenience during work hours, i.e, tea time, lunchtime, etc. You may get urges to stroll for a moment or talk to someone on a phone call, which can only bring distraction and low productivity. By scheduling breaks, you can arrange all unproductive work at that time and maintain your workflow.
Dedicate a Space for Your Remote Office
It is true that when we work from home, we have more comfort and freedom to work wherever we want within the home facilities or as we wish, taking into account clothing and so on.
But, we cannot forget that our objective is to be as productive as possible and to perform as well as when we are in the office. Thus, one of the essential things when telecommuting is having a stipulated place in the house for work.
This will depend a lot on the type of house you have, but the fundamental thing is that you have your corner to carry out the work tasks.
Find a table and especially a comfortable chair, since you will spend 8 hours a day sitting there. Do not worry if you do not have the typical office chair, with you put a cushion behind the kitchen chair and bring it well to the table where you have settled will be enough.
Of course, make sure you have everything you need: a laptop and mouse, a monitor if necessary, your schedule and notebook to organize yourself, the typical container with various pens, and good light. This tries to always have it on that table where you go to work, and if you are going to use the table for more things like eating, every day, before starting, try to have all the material prepared to avoid distractions once you start working.
Get Fresh air
For Proper functioning of mental health, you need to get out your house on after every completion of the task to breathe fresh air and get proper natural light. You don’t need to go in a crowd or a public place; just you have to follow appropriate social distancing rules and stroll around nearby buildings or parks.
Strengthen Communication With Your Team
Without a doubt, one of the most accessible modes of communication is an email, and it can turn into a mode of communication between your colleagues and team members. However, that won’t generally work. It is necessary that while working remotely, you should have other methods of communication as well. Communication from time to time or excessively is way better than improper or incomplete communication. You can connect and communicate as much as you can through SMS, emails, or better conference calls in doubt. With the help of various Video calling platforms available like zoom or google hangout, which has screen sharing features that can help you in time of any technical doubt for better assistance and support. You can also use social media channels to communicate and consider it as your backup plan in case of an emergency.
Don’t Procrastinate
With Remote working or work from home, it is more common to leave tasks that could or should be done today, for tomorrow because, as we know, since we do not have the supervision of a superior 8 hours a day, we can organize our time differently and cause chores to be delayed.
So that this does not happen, take into account the advice that we have given you previously and set yourself goals. There is no point in taking an hour break because you want to disconnect and watch Netflix, in the middle of your workday, with the excuse that “you will do it tomorrow.” Don’t fall for that mistake. We are all adults enough not to overlook our responsibilities and abide by all our tasks when appropriate.
Think that if you do it, the task that you have not done in that hour of Netflix that you have thrown yourself, you are going to have to do it tomorrow, quickly and running and without the same attention or dedication.
Avoid Working on Weekends
Let’s be realistic. Being confined in a state of alarm, we do not care if it is Monday, Friday, or Sunday, or if it is sunny or it rains. And perhaps, there is a task that you have pending that you want to solve on Saturday or Sunday to be able to deliver it on Monday, as you should.
One of our tips is not to work on weekends or at least avoid it. Everything will depend on what position your company is in or what role you play in it. Still, it is better to forget that Netflix hour in the middle of your workday, during the week, or that half-hour watching stories or memes of the Coronavirus, a Monday morning, and do your homework to be free on weekends, not to do the chore on Saturdays because you have not organized your days of the week as you should.
Still, as in everything, there are cases and cases. And perhaps, for H or B, you better do that pending task on Saturday because your children are entertained watching their favorite series and not on Monday at 3 pm when you are pending to do the food or everything else.
Avoid Stress
If you get stressed at work, I don’t want to imagine you isolated, with the kids running around the house and you trying not to stress. But seriously, don’t despair. You won’t gain anything by getting frustrated.
I assure you that by following the advice we have given you, you will be able to put stress aside and make work from home one of your best experiences on confinement days.
Play relaxing music or find a playlist that will cheer you up when you need to get up. Think about the positive side, nobody will listen to you here, and you will not have to be aware of whether the music of which you are a super fan resounds beyond the earpiece, but that makes you a little embarrassed to be heard. And if you dare, try meditation! They say it works, and now we have time for everything.
Conclusion
If you are lucky enough to be able to work from home, take the positive side of the experience, and take advantage of the occasion.
We know that this is going to taste and that some will love not having to get up at 6 in the morning to catch the train and be able to work from the tranquility of their home, but others, among naughty dogs and children, will count the hours to return to the office.
But come on, deep down you know that work from home has more advantages than inconveniences, and with employee engagement ideas for the remote working team can help to boost up the morale and productivity during work from home. So you don’t play around and take advantage of the moment, because you know that later when you ask the boss when everything has happened, maybe he won’t give it to you and you will be dying to work from home.
DepositPhotos – working from home
