Who doesn’t want to work from home, it’s great right…or is it? Well many of us are finding out what it’s like to work from home not for a day here or there, or once-a-week, as is the case in many offices….but every day, day-after-day.
Here are a few tips for working from home that should help your productivity, health and happiness as we all navigate the COVID-19 crisis.
The clients we work with around Dallas through our improv-based corporate training workshops (in a variety of areas, such as unique team building activities, focusing on increasing collaboration and communication, and more) are, for the most, moving forward in a virtual working environment. This negates some of the social benefits of an office setting, but studies also identify coworkers as the single biggest obstacle to productivity. The drop-bys, the quick conversations, the group lunches, etc. Again, the benefits of interacting with colleagues can be substantial, but distractions do abound.
That said, distractions also lurk when working from home.
Here are a handful of tips for working from home that should help.
1) Early bird gets the….
Most offices have a generally accepted range of time when everyone arrives. And with that, you have to wake up, get ready and physically make your way to the office. Not so with the home office experience. That time between waking up and jumping onto the computer can be whatever you want it to be.
Our advice is to get a quick start to your day…jump in on a project, or your to-do-list as soon as you can. Simply getting going can create a momentum that will serve you well the rest of the day. Having a quick shower, maybe a smoothie or coffee and then getting going can be the key to ripping through your list of tasks.
2) Have a plan
Every night, map out a schedule for the next day. Put in any online meetings, calls, deliverables and even put in reminders that indicate when you should be shifting from one task to the next, of when you want to have something completed. Google calendar is good for this, but there are a lot of options for doing this.
3) and break
It’s common to lose track of time, or the normal ebb and flow of a workday when you’ve moved out of the office to working from home. Be sure to take clearly defined breaks, as opposed to just drifting through the day with indiscriminate stops and starts, or grabbing a quick bite and right back to the work station to eat while still tapping away.
It’s important you do step away for breaks…and actually step away. Don’t move away from work but still stay in place checking social media, or ducking into Youtube. Actually move away from your desk. Maybe a brisk walk, take your dog out, or say hi to someone else in the house.
4) Music Queue up some great music to keep you going throughout the day.
5) Shut it Down
Pick a specific time to shut it down for the day. This might move around a little depending on your job, or exceptions that come up, but pick a time to end your day and put a pin in it. The believe that working from home allows for more “work-life” balance is an assumption that often doesn’t play out in real-life.
Day’s will start and somehow never end as you get caught up, or you have one last thing to finish later in the evening. Again, it might not be the same time very day, or an exact time, but having a good idea of when the work day ends will help you create real work-life balance.
Hope everyone is staying safe!
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Team Building in Dallas We do a lot of work with clients of all sizes in Dallas in the area of creating stronger teams through our unique team building sessions.
Connect with either Alex or Kayce if you’d like to learn more about how we can design a team building activity your group will love, whether it’s celebrating the completion of a project, a successful quarter, or your team would benefit from focusing on collaborating, communicating and supporting each other at a higher level – we can design an activity for you.
You can reach us at Alex (Alex@improvtoimprove.org) or Kayce (Kayce@improvtoimprove.org)
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